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.