Busy here lately! The (sold-out!) New York 90-Second Newbery Film Festival screening is just around the corner, and right now I’m appearing at the Warrensburg Children’s Literature Festival. All told, it’ll be about ten days away from my daughters Lucy and Ingrid, who are about to turn 5 and 3, respectively! I just realized I don’t put enough of them up on the blog. Maybe I’ll rectify that after the New York screening. Heather will be joining me in New York, and it’ll be a nice mini-vacation for us.

In the meantime, March 9 was my birthday! I’m 41 now. Heather and I celebrated by taking Lucy and Ingrid to see Frozen, but the girls both freaked out when the snow monster appeared. We had to leave. So here’s how my birthday ended: at 1 a.m., watching a torrented Frozen because I really needed to see how it ended. Clearly 41 years old is not quite as spectacular as 25 (all-night party in Tokyo!), or 30 (Heather and I took a 3-week trip to Costa Rica!), or even 35 (a surprise roast by all my friends!) . . . yes, 41 is a bit calmer.

Here’s a cool thing about this year’s birthday, though: these Order of Odd-Fish fan art birthday cards! The first, above, is by Jacob von Borg, who has previously shared his great Odd-Fish fan art (here and here) and is also one of the masterminds behind the two marvelous 90-Second Newbery movies I’ve received (Frog and Toad Together and The Old Tobacco Shop).

Anyway, check out Jacob’s birthday card for me above, with its mishmash, mogrelized All-Devouring Mother. That design was exactly the vibe I was going for when I wrote it. Pretty terrifying, actually, the more I look at it! I can’t wait to see what Jacob and his family and Portland Community Media has planned for next year’s 90-Second Newbery, too. I got a chance to hang out with Jacob (all-too-briefly) after the Portland screening, and a nicer person you’d never find. Thanks, Jacob!

Speaking of nice folks, Emily Bricker linked me to this wonderful Odd-Fish-style birthday card:

I love that Ken Kiang has a candy corn, of course . . . and that naturally Korsakov is the most enthusiastic eater! Fantastic work as always, Emily. One of these days I hope to meet you in Toronto!

Speaking of Odd-Fish fan art, a few months ago a certain 14-year-old Isabelle from a Chicago suburb sent this gorgeous Oona Looch:

I love how Isabelle nailed all the details: not only Oona’s bald head with the mysterious scars, but the sly way she’s looking off to the side, with a roguish smirk. Pure Looch! I love it. Isabelle came to know of Odd-Fish from when I spoke with Lemony Snicket in Chicago back in November. She picked up my book along with his and I’m glad she did! I wasn’t there to sign it (I was speaking onstage at the time), but Isabelle says that Snicket signed it in my stead, “flippantly” as she reports.

Remember Jacob, whose All-Devouring Mother kicked off this post? His sister Hanna also does some Odd-Fish art, and it’s also great, so let’s wind up the post with her takes on Jo and Fiona:

Top-notch work, Hanna! It was great saying hi to you in Portland too.

Thanks, everyone, for your Order of Odd-Fish art! Next stop, New York City . . .

This is overdue, but THANKS to Tacoma and Portland for fantastic back-to-back 90-Second Newbery Film Festival screenings on March 1 and 2!

The Tacoma Public Library really pulled out all the stops for the March 1 screening, as you can see in their video above. We packed the house! The library actually provided popcorn, rolled out a red carpet with paparazzi for the filmmakers . . . and I kid you not, even crafted custom Oscar-like 90-Second Newbery statuettes for each filmmaker, laser-cut from wood at the library’s Maker Lab!

Here I am with co-presenter Catalyst and co-host “Sir Douglas” (playing the role of “England’s foremost John Newbery expert”), holding those ingenious trophies (which also smelled awesome, like a campfire):

I received lots of great 90-Second Newbery videos from Tacoma because of librarian Sara Sunshine Holloway, who brilliantly integrated 90-Second Newbery moviemaking seminars into the library’s yearlong programming. Thanks, Sara!

Here is Sara (she’s the redhead in sunglasses) with some of the young filmmakers whose movies were shown at the Tacoma screening. (Click here to check out all the 90-Second Newbery movies I received from Tacoma this year!)

We not only had a great screening in Tacoma, but also the next day in Portland! This year we moved the program from the Multnomah County Public Library (thanks for the first two years, fellas!) to the more spacious auditorium at Da Vinci Arts Middle School. The space suited the film festival well! Biologist-turned-writer Amber Keyser proved a game and witty co-host, and many of the Portland filmmakers came onstage, including the folks at Portland Community Media who made this hallucinatory 90-Second Newbery adaptation of William Bowen’s wackadoodle 1922 Honor Book The Old Tobacco Shop: A True Account of What Befell a Little Boy in Search of Adventure.

Here are the perpetrators:

Jacob (whom we’ve featured on the blog before, here and here) even brought up one of the puppets used in the movie, and made it talk, hilariously and sorta terrifyingly:

I stand by my statement: Jacob’s bizarre puppet would’ve made a wonderful third co-host for the rest of the evening. Get him with another puppet, and it could’ve been a kind of Statler-and-Waldorf for Ms. Keyser’s and my hijinks. What has more gravitas that a puppet? To ask the question is to answer it.

The final 90-Second Newbery screening for the season is March 22 in New York City, with co-host Libba Bray! We’ve already “sold out” all 500 seats at the Bartos Forum at the NYPL’s flagship branch, the Stephen A. Schwarzman building. Looking forward to it!

The 90-Second Newbery Film Festival is coming to the Pacific Northwest this weekend! We’re doing a screening in Portland on Sunday, March 2 with co-host Amber Keyser, and in Tacoma on Saturday, March 1 with a mystery co-host. Check out the events page for details on places, times, and reservations. All screenings free.

In honor of the upcoming 90-Second Newbery in Portland this Sunday, I’d like to share a few more standout movies I’ve received from there (I’ll do a similar post for Tacoma later this week).

For instance, check out Kieran’s great adaptation of Louis Sachar’s 1999 Medal winner Holes, above! There’s a lot to like here, and one thing I particularly appreciated, although it seems small, is how everything was clearly explained at the beginning. So often these short movies are so abbreviated and chaotic it’s hard to tell what’s going on. But I was able to follow everything quite clearly. That’s hard to pull off!

And Kieran pulled it off with style! I especially liked the two great fight scenes: when they attack Mr. Sir in order to escape, and the lizard attack. Everyone was acting with such confidence and humor. It was ingenious to tilt the camera for the mountain-climbing scene, and it made it all the more funny when they said the line “Oh so we’re about halfway there? oh look, we’re there.” And I love how Stanley’s natural first reaction, upon finding lots of money, is to fling it away into the wind as quickly as possible. The bit at the end where they’re “making it rain” by fluttering down the dollar bills was quite amusing. Well done, Kieran and friends!

The next selection from Portland is by the Gresham Teen Council, a group of 15 middle- and high-school students who volunteer at the Gresham library. They adapted E.L. Konigsburg’s 1968 Medal winner From the Mixed-Up Files of Mrs. Basil E. Frankweiler:

Very entertaining! I especially enjoyed all the careful little touches and details, like how at the beginning, Claudia is holding the book of the very story they’re experiencing. Postmodern! The music was effective and well-chosen. The eating-the-gum-out-of-the-fountain was funny and gross. The script zipped quite effectively and amusingly through the story. Solid work!

And finally from Portland, Claire, Dalya, Kayra and Will return to the 90-Second Newbery, after their triumph last year, with a new adaptation of Patricia MacLachlan’s 1986 Medal winner Sarah, Plain and Tall:

Looks great! Again, a nice tight script that hits all the necessary plot points with swiftness and verve. It’s harder than it looks! The singing at the beginning was an engaging way to introduce the movie, and the “beard” that the Dad was wearing at the start was pretty awesome too (and the prememptory way Pa says “I didn’t like it much anyway, it itched” after he shaves it off had just the right gruff bashfulness). I liked how the “beach” scene was shot in the bathroom, too. Resourceful! Overall, a great job (And of course I laughed at the WHAT’S THIS, LITTLE HOUSE ON THE PRAIRIE?! tag at the end, followed by a pratfall . . . )

I’ll proudly screen these movies, and many other spectacular entries, at the 90-Second Newbery Film Festival in Portland this Sunday, March 2, from 3-5 pm at the Da Vinci Arts Middle School. Admission is free, but I encourage you to reserve your seat anyway. See you there!

Next post: Tacoma . . .