Lucy and Ingrid are 7 and 5 years old and they’re enthralled with Harry Potter (of course). We’ve been reading our way aloud through the series, book by book, and I’m now reading Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix to them. Every year we have a Halloween party where all the neighborhood kids come, and this year Lucy wanted to be Hermione, so we thought we’d throw the party with a Harry Potter theme! (Ingrid preferred to dress up as Saorise, the selkie from the movie Song of the Sea, but she was still on board. She’s the one in the video who is sprawled out on the couch, too pooped to participate.)

You can check out Lucy’s guided tour in the video above. Unfortunately, once the party got underway, I was too distracted and sociable to take many pictures! (I was also helping to run the “haunted house” that we’d made in the basement, which started out as a cart ride through Gringotts, until an alarm got tripped, and the kids have to crawl through a tunnel to escape the vengeful goblins, which unfortunately led to an Azkaban swarming with dementors! Many children screamed that day.)

Who were Heather and I dressed as? Well, Professor Trelawney and Professor Snape, naturally. Oh, come on, somebody must have shipped these two! It’s not out of the question!

Have you seen these wizards? VERY DANGEROUS.

The thing that took the most work were the candles floating in midair. We made about twenty of them. More labor intensive than I expected, although they were nothing more than cardboard tubes with glue-gun dribbles down the sides to simulate melted wax, all painted white, with an electric mini-candle stuck in the top, hung from the ceiling with fishing line. Hat tip to Pins and Things for the idea!

Some wanted posters for Sirius Black and Bellatrix Lestrange. Speaking of Sirius Black, there’s his head in the fireplace, just like in books 3 and 4!

Here’s some Hogwarts students just hanging out in the stairwell. Not everyone was in-universe. Some upstart telekinetic girl from Stranger Things made an appearance as well.

Unfortunately I don’t have pictures of all the other great costumes that night: the father-and-son Han Solos, the impeccable Mrs. Weasley, the Sirius Black, the Alexander Hamilton, Link and Zelda, and more! In any case, another champion Halloween. Already looking forward to next year!

I grew up in a suburb of Detroit. In high school, I used to go to the Detroit Film Theatre at the Detroit Institute of Arts all the time. The DFT is where I first saw David Lynch on the big screen. It’s where I learned about Jane Campion, Werner Herzog, Akira Kurosawa, so many great filmmakers. There was no Internet to speak of in the late 80s and early 90s. Video stores were a mixed bag, to put it mildly. So if you were fascinated by great and strange movies, and you lived around Detroit, then there were only a few theater options: the Main Art in Royal Oak, the Maple in Bloomfield Hills, and the Detroit Film Theatre. The DFT was my favorite. Just look at it:

With that buildup, you can just imagine my enthusiasm when I got the opportunity to bring the 90-Second Newbery Film Festival to the Detroit Film Theatre! Back on August 26 and 27, we showcased a “Best Of The 90-Second Newbery” screening at the very same place where I used to thrill to Wild At Heart and Touch of Evil!

My co-host was the hilarious, brilliant, and very game Maria Dismondy, author of picture books such as Spaghetti in a Hot Dog Bun and The Juice Box Bully. Check out the video of her and me at the top of this post, doing the opening song-and-dance of What Would John Newbery Do? She’s a natural!

We got good crowds on both Saturday and Sunday. I hope that this leads to future screenings at the Detroit Film Theatre . . . and more 90-Second Newbery entries from the Detroit area!

The fact that this happened at all is due to the enthusiastic advocacy of my old friend Ronica Bhattacharya, who under the name Ronica Dhar wrote a great, highly-praised book called Bijou Roy that St. Martin’s published a few years ago. And the folks who worked at the DFT who actually made the show happen—Emily Bowyer, and Gavin, Jody, Mary, and Lindsay—were so friendly and helpful and a pleasure to work with. Thank you, everyone!

After the show Ronica and I went with another friend to La Rondinella, an amazing restaurant in Detroit’s Eastern Market that’s run by my friend-since-childhood-who-grew-up-across-the-street-from-me David Mancini. The last time I wrote about Dave, back in 2009 (check out the pictures of what we looked like as children, compared to what we’re like now!), it was the one-year anniversary of his pizzeria Supino. Supino is still going strong (and is still some of the best pizza I’ve ever had, along with San Francisco’s Ragazza and Gialina), and La Rondinella blew me away. If you live anywhere near Detroit, you have to go to La Rondinella. The best. Just the best. And the prices are mysteriously, seemingly impossibly low!

It was a great time in Detroit. I always love coming back, seeing family and old friends from high school.

That said, wild horses couldn’t drag me to this year’s 25th high school reunion. I mean, nostalgia has limits.

A few months ago I found something terrific on the Internet. A group of super-talented people had taken the first chapter of The Order of Odd-Fish and recorded it as an audio drama, complete with sound effects, music, narrator, different actors for all the parts, everything! I was floored by how good it was. Such engaged and committed performances! The sound and music and editing were so well-done! You can hear Part 1 through the video above; parts 2 and 3 are below.

Naturally I had to get in touch with the person behind this!

Her name is Kirsten, and she’s a 21-year-old voice actor and writer (you can follow her on Tumblr at owlyvoices.tumblr.com for more voice acting, plus updates and casting calls for Order of Odd-Fish and other projects). I asked her why she chose this book and she wrote back:

Well, I’ve been a big fan of Order of Odd-Fish for a few years now (I’ve read it at least 9 times, honestly) . . . I really wanted to hear what these amazing characters would sound like if they had actual, audible voices, and I wanted to try and introduce the book to other people, too.

I first found the book at my public library about 5 or 6 years ago when I was looking for something to do a book report on. I thought the cover looked really weird (it was the hardcover edition), and the synopsis seemed pretty interesting, so I went ahead and checked it out. Now, it’s my favorite book, and I actually own two copies.

First of all: thank you! Secondly: hooray for public libraries! It’s inspiring for me when folks just find my book randomly, on their own, and end up digging it.

Here’s part 2 of the recording:

I asked Kirsten what particular challenges she had in recording this. Kirsten wrote back,

For me, there were three layers of challenges. First, I had to type up the first chapter of the book so that the voice actors would have a script to follow. I actually missed a few lines here and there and didn’t catch them until the actors had already sent me their completed lines, whoops. Then, as the narrator, I had to try and not flub up anywhere (I flubbed a lot, though), and try to make my voice sound half as interesting as the book was. Finally, as the editor, I had the challenge of trying to fit everyone’s lines in where I wanted them, so that it sounded natural and had good timing. Since everyone recorded using different audio equipment and settings, too, I had to try and edit everything to sound at least similar enough that it was possible the characters were all in the same room together. Oh, and finding just the right royalty-free music and sound effects was pretty hard, too!

Fantasy, who plays Jo on the recording, talked about the recording too:

The challenges I faced would have to be trying not to laugh. Haha. It is a fun book to read through if you want to get a good laugh out of. Also trying to get the emotions so it matches the character but it was a fun process because I then get to see what ways I can portray this character so it fits for who she is . . . I learned a better understanding of Jo’s character and being able to put myself in her situation. When you do whether your acting out the character or not, you get deeper and deeper into what goes on.

Leara Morris-Clark (who played the eggplant lady as well as providing additional background voices) added, “I was mostly challenged by doing the background chatter. I am not very good at that.” Nonsense, Leara! You were great, as was everyone else!

Here’s part 3 of the recording:

The director Kristen concluded with,

I learned that editing larger-scale audio is pretty hard sometimes, but actually tons of fun! And that adding music in just the right place really helps hide weird tones in audio recordings . . . As of now, we’re planning on recording a few more scenes from the book! And by “a few,” I mean . . . a lot. I really need to narrow down the choices, pick just a few. The next scene we’ll be doing will either be Sefino’s introduction (in which case, we will need to find a Sefino), or the scene from the Dust Creek Cafe (in which case, we will need to find several old people). Either way, it’s going to be a blast!

And I know it will sound great!

Thanks so much for making these recordings. I feel very lucky and honored to have my book be the focus of your talent and hard work. I can’t wait to hear more!

And folks, you can check out more of Kirsten and friends and all her great projects at owlyvoices.tumblr.com.