Hey look, there I am in brick form! The above picture was taken outside the Treehouse Children’s Museum in Ogden, Utah, where for the sixth year I taught a weeklong 90-Second Newbery moviemaking camp. Along with co-teachers Caden and Olivia, we helped about a dozen young filmmakers script, shoot, and edit movies based on Newbery-winning books. We churned out three new 90-Second Newbery movies this year, plus some other fun videos, and screened the results that Saturday. The whole shebang was a big success!

Special thanks to Caden, Olivia, Lynne, Rob, Wes, Courtnee, the young filmmakers and their families, and everyone at the Treehouse who make it so fun to come to Ogden every year. (Want to see movies we made in previous years? Here’s how it went in 2025, 2024, 2023, 2022, and 2019.)

Mark your calendars now! The SIXTEENTH annual 90-Second Newbery Film Festival will return to the Treehouse on Saturday, March 13, 2027, in which we’ll feature the movies we made this week along with the best movies I received from around the country.

Every year some kids whom I’ve been working with for a long time age out of the camp. This year was no exception. Twins Georgia and Beatrice have been making movies with me at this camp for years. It’s bittersweet seeing them go, but we’ve made a lot of great stuff together!

Here’s their group’s final movie made at the camp! It’s based on Christina Soontornvat’s 2021 Newbery Honor Book All Thirteen: The Incredible Cave Rescue of the Thai Boys Soccer Team. The book is a nonfiction account of how, in 2018, a soccer team of 12 boys and their coach were trapped in the flooded Tham Luang cave in Thailand for 18 days. Thanks to heroic efforts, all 13 survived. In this 90-Second Newbery retelling, in 2026, five silly, privileged, self-absorbed reality TV contestants visited the same cave. We give you “The Real Housewives of Being Trapped in a Flooded Cave in Thailand”:

I love all the performances here, with each “real housewife” having their own goals and foibles: the ditzy influencer Felisha, the hard-driving #girlboss CEO Fauna, the shallow spiritual seeker Tiffany, the dead-eyed psycho Krysti, the backstabbing competitor Paisleigh, and even the ebullient show host. Their acting really nailed the ludicrous self-regard of reality TV personalities.

Each group began the week by cranking out a quick warm-up movie just to get the juices flowing. Here is that group’s project, a silent horror movie called “The German Word for Total Darkness.”

Chilling, and made great use of the various locations at the Treehouse!

The next group, led by 90-Second Newbery Treehouse workshop veteran Caden, adapted the “Dragons and Giants” vignette from Arnold Lobel’s 1973 Newbery Honor Book Frog and Toad Together, in which Frog and Toad go on an adventure in the woods to prove they are brave, but end up running away from the various snakes, birds, and avalanches they encounter all while exclaiming “I am not afraid!” Ingeniously and hilariously, Caden’s group did it in the style of a kinetic, over-the-top movie trailer:

I loved how this movie used clips from action movies as well as trailer tropes, and the performances were super satisfying. For their warm-up movie, Caden’s group put together this very entertaining video, “The Case of the Killer Goose”:

Great fight scenes and manic vibes throughout!

This is the first year Olivia worked with us at the 90-Second Newbery camp, but she immediately proved herself to be a natural. Her group adapted Tae Keller’s 2021 Newbery Medal Winner When You Trap a Tiger. The original book is about a girl Lily who goes with her family to visit her ailing grandmother. There is a tiger that only Lily can see, and the tiger’s appearances are connected to her grandmother’s illness. This one has a big twist at the end:

They really did a great job portraying how only Lily could see the dragon, the emotions and performances were on point, and I laugh every time I see the tiger giving CPR to the grandmother! As for their warmup movie, Olivia’s group made this elaborate and epic heist movie “The Missing Cheese”:

Charming, funny, and kind of demented! I liked the idea of the two different people from totally different social contexts are going for the cheese, and I particularly enjoyed the anarchic atmosphere the scene where they are ransacking the store and pulling everything off the shelf. Great comic energy in this.

Speaking of comic energy: every year, at the end of the weeklong workshop, we find a lot of weird extra footage on the iPads that the kids use to shoot the movies. And every year, Caden edits all that footage together into a goofy movie with his gloriously Caden-esque sensibility . . . aw heck, I’ll just let him explain:

And that’s all, folks for the 2026 90-Second Newbery Filmmaking Camp at the Treehouse! Want 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 15, 2027 . . . though you can turn the movies in anytime before that. And remember, the 2027 screening at the Treehouse will be on March 13, 2027. You can find complete details at the 90-Second Newbery Film Festival website. See you again soon!