For the fourth time, I taught a “How To Make A 90-Second Newbery” moviemaking camp at Ogden, Utah’s Treehouse Children’s Museum! I look forward to this camp every summer. The kids are so creative, energetic, and engaged. My fellow teachers Caden and Will have done this camp with me several times, and they are brilliant at helping the kids realize their cinematic visions. And the whole staff of the Treehouse—Lynne, Rob, Wes, and more—are super helpful and supportive. It’s such a pleasure to return here every summer to teach this camp . . .

And some kids return every year, too! 90-Second Newbery veterans Beau, Parker, Georgia, Beatrice, Kaitlyn, Crewe, and Wren have participated at least one, and in many cases more, of our previous 90-Second Newbery camps in 2023, 2022, and 2019. This year we also had in our camp newcomers Katelyn, Ethan, Jacob, Bennett, Hannah Joy, Delphine, and Olive. I’m looking forward to returning to the Treehouse to show their movies—and the best movies from around the country—at our screening of the 14th annual 90-Second Newbery Film Festival on February 22, 2025. Mark your calendar now!

So let’s get to the movies we made that week.

The first movie I want to highlight is based on Louis Sachar’s 1999 Newbery Medal Winner Holes. The original book is about Stanley Yelnats, a boy with a curse on his family. One day expensive shoes fall out of the sky onto Stanley’s head, he is falsely arrested for stealing the shoes, and he is sentenced to Camp Green Lake, a desert prison camp where the warden makes boys dig holes all day looking for lost treasure. Stanley makes friends with a boy named Zero. They rebel against digging holes and run away into the desert, where they break the curse afflicting Stanley’s family, and dig up the treasure the warden had been searching for . . . which rightfully belongs to Stanley!

We like to do these 90-Second Newbery movies with a creative twist. So in this movie, instead of the boy Stanley Yelnats, it’s a girl “Starley Yelrats.” Instead of shoes falling on their head, it’s a fancy dress and a teacup. And instead of going to a work prison camp where boys are forced to dig holes, Starley is sent to a young ladies’ finishing school where the girls are forced to drink 50 cups of tea a day. Just as in the book, in this movie Starley also breaks a generational curse—and there’s a lot more swordfighting in this movie than in the original book! It’s by the group of Bennett, Crewe, Beatrice, and Hannah, with help from the rest of the campers. I give you: TEACUPS!

An original premise, hilarious performances, and masterful swordfighting all combine to make a winner of a movie! Great job! (And I love how in this movie, and all of them, we have so many sets and costumes available at the Treehouse to make the movies look really good.)

The next movie is based on E.B. White’s 1953 Newbery Honor Book Charlotte’s Web. Now, the original story is about a runt pig, Wilbur, who is saved from the ax by kind farmgirl Fern. Wilbur has self-esteem issues, and he is eventually sent to Fern’s uncle’s farm, where he doesn’t fit in with the other animals—and he’s terrified he’s going to be slaughtered and made into bacon. But a kind spider named Charlotte sees the worth in him, and she weaves words into her web above Wilbur’s pigsty, like SOME PIG and RADIANT and TERRIFIC, that convince everyone Wilbur is indeed a special pig. But at the end, Charlotte dies . . . which is pretty sad and dark for a kids book!

Again, we always encourage folks who make 90-Second Newbery movies to put their own weird twist on the story. So this one is done in the style of a cheesy 90s sitcom like Friends or Seinfeld, and it’s by the group of KateLyn (a newcomer), Kaitlyn (a seasoned veteran of the 90-Second Newbery), Georgia, Ethan, and Beau, with help from the other campers.

Very funny performances from everyone. I loved all the classic sitcom touches, like the canned audience reactions, the Seinfeld slap bass for scene transitions, and the opening credits with the Friends theme song . . . with rewritten lyrics sung by the fearless Ethan! I was also very amused by the meta touch of the shell-shocked studio audience at the end.

The third 90-Second Newbery movie we made is based on Richard and Florence Atwater’s 1939 Newbery Honor Book Mr. Popper’s Penguins. The original story is about Mr. Popper, who sends a fan letter to an Antarctic explorer, and unexpectedly receives back a shipment of a male penguin as a surprise gift. This leads to the zoo sending the Popper family a female penguin, which results in lots of baby penguins. To make ends meet, Mr. and Mrs. Popper train the penguins to dance and do tricks, and they take their show on the road.

This movie tells the story from a different angle: as a 1940s detective noir movie in which a private eye is trying to figure out where all the penguins are coming from . . . complete with ominous black-and-white camerawork, hardboiled voiceover, a plot with lots of double-crossing, and one of the weirdest covers of Michael Jackson’s “Billy Jean” that I’ve ever heard. It’s by the group of Parker, Jacob, Delphine, and Wren:

A crackerjack premise, a tight script, brilliant and funny performances, and great camerawork and editing made this one shine. It really nailed the noir tone, and those CGI penguins dancing are both goofy and strangely ominous to me. I loved this movie.

But those aren’t the only movies we made at camp! Just like every year, we kicked off the first day by making practice movies. The only rule was the groups had to script, shoot, and edit a movie all in one day, and the premise had to be about some people pursuing a treasure.

For the first group, the girls Crewe, Beatrice, and Hannah wanted to make a romantic movie, but the sole boy in the group Bennett did not want to. We figured out a compromise: in this movie, Bennett is a cowboy who loves being a bachelor, and Crewe, Beatrice, and Hannah are man-hungry ladies who are ravenous for a boyfriend, and Bennet is the treasure they pursue. Will they get what they want? Will Bennett escape without getting tied down? Let’s find out in “Chasing the Cowboy”:

The second group did a movie about called “Lizard Chicken President” in which the “treasure” that is being sought is a lizard chicken that, if acquired, will allow one to become the President of the United States (timely and topical!):

And here’s another movie in which many treasure hunters—a chef, a witch, and more—are also trying to get a lizard chicken treasure. I particularly liked when “President Horse” is staring pensively out the Oval Office window:

Now of course, at the end of the week we found a lot of unused footage on the iPads the kids used to film the movies, and there was a lot of goofy and funny stuff on them. Caden took the opportunity to edit it all together into a baffling but amusing video:

The Saturday after camp concluded, we showed all of the above movies at a mini-screening at the Treehouse, and all the campers attended, with their friends and family. Then they took me out for ice cream at Farr’s around the corner, just as they had last year! Such a great week. I’m looking forward to many more years of leading this amazing camp!

Inspired to make your own movie for the 90-Second Newbery Film Festival? It’s open to anyone around the world, parental help is okay, and the deadline is January 17, 2025. You can find complete details at the 90-Second Newbery Film Festival website. Join the fun!