At last, we’re back to live screenings! On February 18, 2023, we kicked off the TWELFTH season of the 90-Second Newbery Film Festival at the Treehouse Museum in Ogden, Utah. (Check out our complete schedule here, with additional live screenings in Chicago, Boston, Brooklyn, Trenton, and San Antonio.) Thanks to Lynne Goodwin, Rob Goodwin, Wes Whitby, and the rest of the folks at the Treehouse who made this show run so smoothly.

And check out the opening skit above, in which co-host Keir Graff (author of The Tiny Mansion and more) and I consider all the Newbery-winning books that have been banned recently, which erupts into a “Marge vs. the Monorail” Simpsons-style song-and-dance number. (There’s always a song-and-dance number at the start of these shows. Sorry.)

We showed a mix of movies from Utah and across the country. Some of those movies from Utah were made right at the Treehouse, at a workshop I taught back in July. For instance, here’s an adaptation of “The Garden,” a short story from Arnold Lobel’s 1973 Honor Book Frog and Toad Together, by Parker, Beatrice, Crew, Max, and James:

In the original story, Toad plants some seeds and is very impatient waiting for them to grow. It’s a gentle story about learning how to wait for good things. But this group decided what the story really needed was three ruthless assassins who are out to destroy Frog and Toad! Check out my complete review here.

The next Ogden-made movie is by Georgia and James, an adaptation of E.B. White’s 1953 Honor Book Charlotte’s Web. Ingeniously, they retell the story in the style of Suzanne Collins’ book and movie The Hunger Games:

Ingenious and funny! Here’s our complete review on the 90-Second Newbery website.

The next Treehouse-made is by Wren, Lyla, Evie, Faith, and Parker, and it retells Kate DiCamillo’s 2014 Newbery Medal Winner Flora and Ulysses in the style of an action-packed movie trailer:

Outstanding performances, snappy camera work, and ace editing really made this movie come together! Complete review at the 90-Second Newbery website.

But that’s not all! On their own, Ben and Theo of Holladay, Utah made this goofily amusing adaptation of Arthur Bowie Chrisman’s 1926 Newbery Medal Winner Shen of the Sea:

Shen of the Sea is a long book of sixteen stories. Instead of trying to cram all of them into a short movie, this movie focuses on just one vignette, “That Lazy Ah Fun.” In the original story, the servant Ah Fun is ordered by Dr. Chu Ping to make a fire. Instead of using proper kindling and firewood, Ah Fun thoughtlessly throws into the fire the doctor’s medical books, cane, and various medicines . . . and the unexpected combination of ingredients leads to an explosion and the invention of gunpowder! Here, Dr. Chu Ping is hilariously reimagined as a weird dirtbag weirdo, complete with sunglasses and mullet-y hair. Entertaining and bizarre! Complete review here.

Thanks again to the staff at the Treehouse, my co-host Keir Graff, and Utah Humanities for making this show possible . . . and most of all, the young filmmakers! Remember, it’s never to early to start making your movies for next year’s screening. They’re due January 2024, but you can turn them in anytime. See you at the Treehouse next year!

(Want to bring the 90-Second Newbery Film Festival to your town? Drop me a line at james@90secondnewbery.com.)

The 90-Second Newbery relies on private donations and grants to keep going. It’s only through your generosity that we can continue bringing public screenings and book-to-movie workshops to libraries and schools nationwide. You can make your (tax-deductible!) donation here. Donations are handled through our fiscal sponsor Fractured Atlas, a non-profit arts service organization.

The 90-Second Newbery Film Festival is an annual video contest I founded in which kid filmmakers create short movies that tell the entire stories of Newbery-winning books—preferably with a fun twist. We’re in our twelfth year, and after two years of virtual screenings, I’m excited to announce that the 90-Second Newbery is back with LIVE SCREENINGS in six cities! These screenings are huge fun and we consistently draw sold-out audiences of hundreds of folks, so make your FREE reservations now:

Saturday, February 18, 2023
The OGDEN, UTAH afternoon screening for the 12th annual 90-Second Newbery Film Festival. Co-hosted by me and author Keir Graff (The Tiny Mansion, The Phantom Tower). At the Treehouse Children’s Museum (347 22nd Street). 6 pm. Get your tickets here.

Friday, March 3, 2023
GENERAL DEADLINE for movie submissions to the 12th annual 90-Second Newbery Film Festival.

Saturday, March 11, 2023
The CHICAGO screening for the 12th annual 90-Second Newbery Film Festival! At the Pritzker Auditorium at the Harold Washington Library Center (400 S State St). Co-hosted by me and author Keir Graff (The Tiny Mansion, The Phantom Tower). Bookselling on-site by City Lit Books. 2 pm. Get your FREE tickets here.

Saturday, March 25, 2023
The BOSTON screening for the 12th annual 90-Second Newbery Film Festival! At the Rabb Auditorium at the Boston Public Library Central Library in Copley Square (700 Boylston Street). Co-hosted by me and author Rebecca Mahoney (The Valley and the Flood and The Memory Eater). Bookselling on-site by Trident Booksellers & Cafe. 3 pm. Get your FREE tickets here.

Saturday, April 15, 2023
The BROOKLYN screening for the 12th annual 90-Second Newbery Film Festival! At the Dweck Auditorium at the Brooklyn Public Library (10 Grand Army Plaza). Co-hosted by me and Chris Grabenstein (Mr. Lemoncello’s Library, The Smartest Kid in the Universe, and more) with special guest Newbery honoree Rita Williams-Garcia (One Crazy Summer and more). 1 pm. Get your FREE tickets here.

Sunday, April 16, 2023
The TRENTON, NJ screening for the 12th annual 90-Second Newbery Film Festival! At the New Jersey State Museum Auditorium (205 West State Street, Trenton, NJ). Co-hosted by me and Chris Grabenstein (Mr. Lemoncello’s Library, The Smartest Kid in the Universe, and more). 3 pm. Get your FREE tickets here.

Saturday, April 22, 2023
The SAN ANTONIO, TX screening for the 12th annual 90-Second Newbery Film Festival! At the Tobin Center for the Performing Arts Will Naylor Smith Riverwalk Plaza. Co-hosted by me and Nikki Loftin (Wish Girl, Nightingale’s Nest, and more). On-site bookselling by The Twig. Made possible by our partners at Bexar County Digital Library Bibliotech and the Hidalgo Foundation through the generosity of H-E-B Texas Grocery. 11 am – 12 pm. Get your FREE tickets here.

Thanks so much to my co-hosts Keir Graff, Rebecca Mahoney, Chris Grabenstein, and Nikki Loftin for being part of this.

It’s not too late to make your own movie for this year’s 90-Second Newbery. It’s open to young filmmakers up to 18 years old, and adult help is allowed. The deadline is March 3, 2023, so get busy now! (Need technical help and moviemaking advice? We have video resources and how-to guides.)

Want inspiration? Check out the video at the top of this post, in which kids from the Treehouse Museum in Ogden, Utah put their own spin on Arnold Lobel’s 1973 Newbery Honor Book Frog and Toad Together. The original Frog and Toad short story “The Garden” is a gentle lesson about learning to be patient with natural processes. But perhaps the original story is too patient, and what the story really needs is three ruthless assassins who are out to destroy Frog and Toad!

(Want to bring the 90-Second Newbery Film Festival to your town? Drop me a line at james@90secondnewbery.com.)

The 90-Second Newbery relies entirely on private donations and grants to keep going! It’s only through your generosity that we can continue bringing our free public screenings and book-to-movie workshops to libraries and schools nationwide. You can make your (tax-deductible!) donation here. Donations are handled through our fiscal sponsor Fractured Atlas, a non-profit arts service organization.

The Secrets of Story podcast is back with new episodes! I realize I’ve skipped episodes 37 and 38—don’t worry, I’ll post about those later. For now, let’s dig into Episode 39: “How Do You Get An Agent?” Listen to it here:

Many people who listen to the podcast are writers, so in this episode, Matt Bird and I talk about the burning question most writers have when starting out: How does one get represented? Matt and I love our current agents, but for both of us it was a long and winding road getting repped. You’ll find lots of helpful hints for the unagented!

In this episode, I recommend two websites for finding agents: AgentQuery.com and ManuscriptWishList.com. I’m sure there are other websites, but those are the ones I used and know about.

Also in this episode, we talk about the advantages and disadvantages of self-publishing. I don’t know much about that, but I do know someone who really took the plunge: Bill Shunn. I heartily recommend his excellent memoir The Accidental Terrorist: Confessions of a Reluctant Missionary, which is all about his time as a Mormon missionary and the history of the LDS church. You can find that book here (I truly love it). You can also check out Bill’s exhaustive and realistic blog posts about the ups and downs of self-publishing here.

(Speaking of self-publishing, back when Matt considered self-publishing The Secrets of Story, he made various covers for it with different titles. To put it gently: when it comes to graphic design, Matt makes a great storytelling guru. You can see his somewhat embarrassing book covers here.)

In this episode, I also mention my first published short story, “The Lam of Hal Hamburger,” which was published in 2004 in the Chicago Reader. You can find the short story here. There was art by Paul Hornschemeier (who did the cover art for the paperback of The Order of Odd-Fish) that was included in the print edition of the Reader but is no longer on the Reader website, so I’m posting it here! Isn’t it great?

My agent nowadays is the fantastic John Cusick of Folio Literary. In this episode, I mention the harrowing experience of getting dropped by my former agent Tina Wexler (now Dubois) . . . and how, coincidentally, at just the same time, my neighbor Mary Winn Heider secured Tina as an agent! (Another coincidence: a few days after recording this episode, Tina got back in touch with me to let me know she is leaving the publishing world and switching careers to early elementary education.)

Anyway, you should really read Mary Winn’s books The Losers at the Center of the Galaxy and The Mortification of Fovea Munson, which is being made into a theatrical adaptation with composer Justin Huertas, opening March 2023 at the Kennedy Center! Yowza! Mary Winn also wrote the picture book The Unicorns Who Saved Christmas and the upcoming Stupendous Switcheroo series with graphic novelist Chad Sell.

Another thing we mention in the episode was how I got my agent by constant cold-querying, with hundreds of rejections . . . and Matt, by contrast, got his agent by effortlessly glomming on to his wife’s agent! Matt’s wife is of course the super-influential blogger and podcaster Betsy Bird, who is the author of picture books, a middle-grade book, and nonfiction books about children’s literature for adults. A true powerhouse! I met Matt through Betsy, and she has been so good to me. Learn more about Betsy’s various projects here. In this episode, Matt and I mention about her “controversial” appearance on the cover of School Library Journal a few years ago, where she and a few other children’s librarians are pictured holding what looks like alcoholic drinks (Quelle horreur) Anyway, here’s the infamous cover! Betsy’s the one seated in the middle.

It was through my young adult fantasy novel The Order of Odd-Fish that I met Betsy, and how I got my first agent. In this episode, Matt and I promise that I will share my query letter that got me representation for that book—we explain what a “query letter” is in more detail in the episode, but a “query letter” is essentially a short introductory message that you send to a prospective agent that describes you and the manuscript you wish for them to represent. So anyway, here it is, the query letter that started it all. (And if you’re intrigued by this explanation of The Order of Odd-Fish, why not buy it?)

Dear [Agent Name],

I have recently completed a young adult fantasy called The Order of Odd-Fish. I would like to submit it for your consideration.

Jo Larouche is a thirteen-year-old girl who, up until now, has spent her life taking care of her erratic Aunt Lily. Aunt Lily is an elderly ex-Hollywood starlet with a past so murky she’s not even sure how she came to be raising Jo. They live alone in Aunt Lily’s decaying mansion in the Californian desert. Jo doesn’t know anything about her real parents, or where she is from; the only clue is a note Aunt Lily found with her, a note that said she was a “dangerous baby.”

Jo and Aunt Lily’s quiet life is interrupted by some unexpected houseguests – an obese ex-KGB agent and a snobbish cockroach – who bring Jo and Aunt Lily to Eldritch City, where Aunt Lily had once been a knight in the Order of Odd-Fish. Jo’s parents had also been knights of the Odd-Fish. But they were killed, and Eldritch City was nearly destroyed, in the conflagration surrounding Jo’s strange and violent birth.

A cult called the Silent Sisters had claimed Jo was their reincarnated queen, a world-destroying goddess called the All-Devouring Mother. The Silent Sisters’ attempts to spirit away the newborn Jo led to a battle that almost demolished Eldritch City. Even today the name of Jo’s family, and the incident of Jo’s birth, is only spoken of in fearful whispers. Nobody in Eldritch City has ever seen Jo, but almost everyone believes that she is a supernatural monster. So Jo must remain incognito in Eldritch City, for if anyone other than her closest protectors knew her real identity, they would turn against her just as they had thirteen years ago.

Following in her parents’ footsteps, Jo becomes Aunt Lily’s squire in the Order of Odd-Fish. There are many orders of knights in Eldritch City, each with its own traditions and mission; the mission of the Order of Odd-Fish is to research the appendix to a great encyclopedia. This appendix aims to chronicle dubious and untrustworthy knowledge that is not reliable enough to include in the official encyclopedia. Each knight in the Order of Odd-Fish has his or her own dubious scholarly specialty, such as Useless Weaponry, or Unusual Smells, or Dithering. The knights cooperate in their research and live communally in a lodge with their adolescent squires, who are knights-in-training.

Jo explores Eldritch City’s raucous neighborhoods, makes new friends and enemies, and learns more about her scandalous parents and why her own birth almost caused the destruction of the city. But Jo’s faith in her new friends, and their trust in her, is tested when her real identity is exposed. And Jo is put to the ultimate trial when she confronts her true nature, which is frighteningly close to what the Silent Sisters had claimed.

My previous publishing credits include “The Lam of Hal Hamburger,” a 14,000-word short story that was featured on the front page of the December 31, 2004 fiction issue of the Chicago Reader.

The Order of Odd-Fish is 130,000 words long. I look forward to hearing from you.

Best regards,

James

And one last thing. We mention in this episode that my new novel, Bride of the Tornado, is coming out in August! It’s already available for pre-order, which you should do through my favorite independent Chicago bookstore, Exile in Bookville. I’ll do a proper post about it later, but for now, check out this snazzy cover!

Va-va-voom, eh? More about Bride of the Tornado soon!