Ah, Dorothy Gale meets her nemesis the tornado again. On Friday I went to C2E2—the “Chicago Comic and Entertainment Expo”—to speak on two panels to promote Bride of the Tornado. This was my second time at C2E2 (the first was in 2022, to promote Dare to Know). But this time I came in my tornado costume. I quickly learned that these conventions are much, much more fun if you’re in costume. People talk to you! You have an excuse to talk to others! People want to take pictures with you! It’s an extrovert’s paradise!

For instance, when I saw this woman dressed as the iconic ending of Midsommar, I had to get a picture. She saw that I was carrying Bride of the Tornado and it turned out she had read and loved the book! (But she also said, “I’ll never read it again. Too intense.” Fair!)

Crazy coincidences and reunions happened, too: I saw Britnee, who had made this gorgeous piece of fan art for The Order of Odd-Fish back in 2010 . . . a picture of Jo that hangs in my bedroom to this day! The picture of Britnee in the lower right-hand corner is from when she attended one of our Odd-Fish fan art gallery shows in 2011, where I had featured her work. How amazing it was to see her again!

I’m a sucker for Star Wars, so it was a treat to hang out with Jawas, X-Wing pilots, a remote-controlled R2 unit, and the fearsome Grand Admiral Thrawn:

Oh yeah, did I mention I was on some panels? In the morning I did a panel called “The Hero Doesn’t Always Journey,” about weird and alternative story structures, which is catnip for me. It was moderated by Stephanie Carr (with whom I did an interview later) and the authors Malayna Evans, Marc J. Gregson, and Kristen Simmons. The room was satisfyingly full, it was a substantial topic, and everyone had a lot of insightful things to say!

And in the afternoon I was on another happily well-attended panel, this one put together by the Chicago chapter of the Horror Writers Association called “Frightening an Audience: How Horror Writers Generate Fear.” It was moderated by Damian Serbu and I shared the panel with Aleco Julius and David Rider, and this was another freewheeling and fun discussion. Like the earlier panel, there were also many great questions from the audience!

But let’s look at more fantastic costumes! I liked it when friends came in group costumes, like Finn and Jake from Adventure Time:

Or Gandalf and Frodo (who gifted me with a potato sticker—if you know, you know):

And this group of bold adventurers:

It was April 26, which I didn’t realize was Alien Day, which makes sense because the planet where they first find the xenomorph eggs is LV426:

Who would win: a xenomorph, or steampunk cyborg Lincoln??

I loved the fanatical commitment of many of the costumes, like this armor made entirely of Yu-Gi-Oh! cards:

It was, in all, a wonderful and totally exhausting day. I got to talk to lots of folks, meet friends old and new, and sell and sign some books. Not bad for a day’s work. I’ll be back!

The 90-Second Newbery relies on donations to bring 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.

After a four-year hiatus, we brought the 90-Second Newbery Film Festival back to Rochester, New York! We did it at the Dryden Theater at the George Eastman Museum, thanks to Eliza Kozlowski. Thanks also to the Irondequoit Public Library for sponsoring us, especially Amy Holland and Matt Krueger (and thanks to Amy and Arthur for putting me up while I was in town). Big thanks to Carol White Llewellyn and Deb Ross for promoting, and KidsOutAndAbout.com being our media sponsor. Major thanks to Shari, Alyssa, and Eric at the Dryden Theater, who fixed our last minute tech problems. And of course, thanks to our audience and the young filmmakers behind the movies, along with their families, teachers, and librarians who showed up. We had a lively, fun crowd of nearly 300 folks!

The screening was co-hosted by me and the legendary Bruce Coville (author of My Teacher Is An Alien and dozens more fantastic kids’ books). Being onstage with Bruce is always a treat—check out our opening skit at the top of this post, in which we meet “Lil’ Newby,” a redesigned talking Newbery Medal who can’t stop lying about past Newbery winners (did you know about Beverly Cleary’s stint in a criminal motorcycle gang?). Here’s Bruce and I arguing about the script before the show, and signing books for fans afterward! Thanks, Bruce!

In the days leading up to the screening, I spoke to students at Johanna Perrin Middle School, Martha Brown Middle School, Taylor Elementary School, Bernabi Elementary School, Canal View Elementary School, and Munn Elementary School (whew!). A few days before that, I also spoke at the Good Neighbor Bookstore in Lakewood, NY. A busy week!

One of the great things about returning to Rochester is seeing old friends. Eian-Gabriel Sinclair has been making stop-motion movies for the 90-Second Newbery Film Festival for almost ten years now (you can see them all here). Here we are here:

And here’s Eian-Gabriel’s stop-motion movie for this year, a Claymation adaptation of Katherine Applegate’s 2013 Newbery Medal Winner The One And Only Ivan—done in the style of King Kong!

As the judges said in part on the 90-Second Newbery website (full review here), “Entertaining and adroit . . . The background music and voiceover narration were artful and felt period-specific, as well as the black-and-white cinematography. I thought it was clever how it swapped out the roaring lion in the iconic Twentieth Century Fox logo for a fluidly animated Ivan the gorilla.”

Speaking of stop-motion, we also received a splendid stop-motion version of Kelly Barnhill’s 2017 Newbery Medal Winner The Girl Who Drank The Moon, by Opal Knight and her family in Rochester:

As the judges said in part on the 90-Second Newbery website (full review here), “This movie had stupendous stop-motion animation with Calico Critters all throughout, and the well-designed intertitles did a fine job keeping the story clear and on track . . . I was also really amazed by the scene of the moon and stars, here ingeniously represented by white and yellow yarn that get entangled.”

The next movie is based on Christina Soontornvat’s 2023 Newbery Honor Book The Last Mapmaker, as adapted by Anna Mathews and her family in Savannah, New York:

As the judges said in part on the 90-Second Newbery website (full review here), “This movie sprinted through the plot of the book with a lot of charm! All the actors were compelling and believable in their performances . . . I especially relished the combat scenes: an energetic swordfight on the boat, and a fistfight with dramatic music near the end!”

And hey, here I am with these great filmmakers after the screening!

The next movie is another adaptation of The Girl Who Drank the Moon, this time by the kids of Munn Elementary in Spencerport, New York:

As the judges said in part on the 90-Second Newbery website (full review here), “From the very beginning I knew this movie would be a banger, with a creative hand-drawn title screen and a dramatic first scene in which baby Luna is taken away from her mother . . . All the performances of the characters were fun to watch, effectively conveying each characters’ emotions and situations. Great work!”

Bernabi Elementary of Spencerport submitted this wonderful version of Erin Entrada Kelly’s 2018 Newbery Medal Winner Hello, Universe:

As the judges said in part on the 90-Second Newbery website (full review here), “This movie worked well because of the strength of the performances: Kaori’s pushy confidence, Virgil’s frustrated timidity, Chet’s bullying snottiness, and Valencia’s tentative charm . . . This movie zoomed through the most important plot points of the story quickly and accurately, and making sense even if one hadn’t read the book.”

Taylor Elementary School in Spencerport submitted four great movies, including three different versions of Louis Sachar’s 1999 Newbery Medal Winner Holes, each with its own weird twist. For instance, this first one (by Isaac, Sean, Luca, Becca, Charlie, Greyson, and Chase) has Stanley going to a prison camp not in the middle of the desert, but on the moon:

As the judges said in part on the 90-Second Newbery website (full review here), “There was a creative use of green screen to put us in the various locations of the story: not just on Earth, but also in the spaceship, on the moon, and in a sci-fi space station . . . this movie zipped through many of the plot points from the story in an intriguingly sci-fi style, and it looked like everyone was having a great time making it!”

Also from Taylor Elementary, here’s another version of Holes—but in this one, instead of going to Camp Green Lake, Stanley goes to the North Pole! This one is by Noah, Henley, Carter, Sadie, Isaiah, Chloe, Penny, and Zachary:

As the judges said in part on the 90-Second Newbery website (full review here), “Stanley’s amusingly over-the-top acting was fun to watch . . . this was a fun idea done with enthusiasm and infectious high spirits!”

The last version of Holes we got from Taylor Elementary was by Logan, Dom, Lylia, Dakoda, Chelsea, Tessa, and Heidi. In this one, when Stanley is given the choice between Camp Green Lake and jail, he chooses . . . jail!

As the judges said in part on the 90-Second Newbery website (full review here), “Resourceful and ingenious green screen work throughout, and I loved the fun costumes . . . Made with a lot of humorous energy, and even if it doesn’t really follow the book much, it is still entertaining to watch!”

Joel, Luca, Sadie, Andrew, and Willow of Taylor Elementary also did this version of Jerry Craft’s 2020 Newbery Medal Winner New Kid:

As the judges said in part on the 90-Second Newbery website (full review here), “This movie resourcefully used computer graphics to represent the characters, which look very similar to those in the original book . . . The fight scene in the cafeteria at the end was well-staged, using a combination of visuals, dialogue, and narration to make it clear what is happening, and bringing the whole story to an effective climax. Great work!”

Finally, Canal View Elementary submitted this movie of Rebecca Stead’s 2010 Newbery Medal Winner When You Reach Me:

As the judges said in part on the 90-Second Newbery website (full review here), “This movie made effective use of computer graphics to tell the story, brought to life with engaging voiceover performances from the kid actors . . . my favorite part was when the Laughing Man gets hit by the car, and flies up through the sky, out into space, and up to heaven! Very creative!”

And those were the local entries for the 2024 Rochester 90-Second Newbery Film Festival! I’m so glad that we’ve brought the screenings back to Rochester. Here’s to many more years of this!

The 90-Second Newbery relies on private donations 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.

We’re back in the saddle in Boston! On April 6 we brought the 90-Second Newbery Film Festival back to the Boston Public Library. And hey, this year we got a big write-up in the Boston Globe! Not too shabby! You can read the article here.

The screening was co-hosted by me and the YA author Rebecca Mahoney. She and I also did a bookstore event at Porter Square Books that Thursday, in which we did an authors-in-conversation thing about my book Bride of the Tornado and her latest book The Memory Eater, which was a YA Staff Pick of the year at Porter Square Books! Both of our books have a lot in common, actually: they’re both about girls in small towns that are threatened by emotion/memory-devouring supernatural entities. If you get a chance, read The Memory Eater and Rebecca’s other book The Valley and the Flood, they’re both really good.

It’s always a great show with Rebecca, and she really killed with the opening skit! Unfortunately I don’t have a video to share, because the sound in the video is unusuable. If you want to see it, here’s what the skit was like when I performed it in Brooklyn with Rita Williams-Garcia. Here’s a picture from when Rebecca and I did it in Boston:

We got one locally-made video from the Boston area this year, so I was expecting a low turnout, but we actually got a pretty respectable crowd (probably due to that Globe article). So most of the movies in the screening were “best-of-the-best” 90-Second Newbery movies I’ve received from around the country over the years.

That one local entry was by the Berkshire Country Day School’s fifth and sixth grade English Class in Stockbridge, MA, and it was based on Madeleine L’Engle’s 1963 Newbery Medal winner A Wrinkle in Time. Check it out!

As the reviewers said on the 90-Second Newbery website (full review here), “I enjoyed the smart-aleck insolence of the script . . . This movie was funny, resourceful, and well-made, with fantastic performances by everyone!”

Thank you to Laura Koenig, Bailey Watroba, and everyone at the Boston Public Library for all their support for the film festival. Thanks also to Kate Gilbert for her tireless work for the 90-Second Newbery and Jessica Kent for helping to promote it. Thanks to the folks at Trident Bookstore for selling books after the show. And thanks most of all to the young filmmakers who created the movies, and the teachers, librarians, and family who helped them!

I hope we get more movies from the Boston area for next year! The movies are due in January 2025, but you can turn them in any time. You can find complete details about the film festival, including tips on how to make your own movies, at the 90-Second Newbery website. Go and do it!

The 90-Second Newbery relies on private donations 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.