{"id":19948,"date":"2017-01-09T08:00:42","date_gmt":"2017-01-09T13:00:42","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/blogs.publishersweekly.com\/blogs\/shelftalker\/?p=19948"},"modified":"2017-01-09T08:00:42","modified_gmt":"2017-01-09T13:00:42","slug":"90-second-newbery-revisited","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/blogs.publishersweekly.com\/blogs\/shelftalker\/?p=19948","title":{"rendered":"90-Second Newbery Revisited"},"content":{"rendered":"

[Today’s post is brought to you by Leslie Hawkins, owner of Spellbound Children’s Bookshop in Asheville NC. And the letter Y.]
\nLast night, film fans around the world had their eyes glued to the 74th Annual Golden Globe Awards ceremony and the red carpet hoopla beforehand. Today, I\u2019d like to turn our collective kid-lit-loving attention to another exciting film event: the Sixth Annual 90-Second Newbery Film Festival.
\nA few years ago, Elizabeth Bluemle interviewed the festival\u2019s founder, author James Kennedy. \u00a0(You can read that wonderful post about the festival\u2019s origins here<\/a>.) \u00a0I\u2019m revisiting the topic in this, my first post for ShelfTalker, because I\u2019ve had the great pleasure of being part of a community effort to bring an official 90-Second Newbery Film Festival screening to Asheville, N.C., for the first time. That\u2019s right\u2014we\u2019re going to have a glamorous red carpet event of our own, Asheville Kid Style!
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On the film set of THE HUNDRED DRESSES,<\/p><\/div>
\n
\nThe way it all came together is a perfect example of how bookstores and libraries are part of the fabric of our communities because of the connections we naturally make as we\u2019re doing our jobs.
\nMy first contact about the newly proposed Asheville 90-Second Newbery screening came from a casual conversation with Jesse, Youth Services Librarian at our public library. She was at my bookstore, shopping for the library, when she mentioned that someone had approached her about getting involved with 90-Second Newbery. She had volunteered the library\u2019s 150-seat auditorium for the screening and suggested that he get in touch with me. That someone turned out to be Elliot Weiner, new to town and now Program Director for our film festival.
\nAfter chatting with Elliot, I was happy to find ways that I could help, including sharing my bookstore\u2019s local press contact list and promoting the festival in store and through our customer mailing list. I also put Elliot in touch with local filmmaker Charlotte Taylor, co-founder of Mechanical Eye Microcinema<\/a>. (How did I know her? She was in a book club at my bookstore!) \u00a0They were able to collaborate on free workshops for kids interested in making films.
\nI asked Elliot to tell me\u00a0a little more about the process from his point of view.<\/p>\n

There are currently only a handful of screenings around the country. Tell us how you went about bringing one to Asheville. <\/strong>
\nI learned of the 90-Second Newbery when I lived in Tacoma and worked with some kids\u2019 groups there to create a few films. After moving here, I wondered why a creative place like Asheville didn\u2019t have the Festival. I contacted James Kennedy, the founder, and asked \u201cWhy?\u201d He said, \u201cBecause no one ever started it.\u201d So, I decided to try that. Why not, right?
\nThis year, I wanted to see if I could find some groups who were interested in making a film or two.\u00a0\u00a0 met with Chanda and Susan at Asheville Community Theatre, and they immediately loved the idea\u2026 so we scheduled a couple blocks of time and Chanda recruited two groups of kids. The rest is film history \u2013 or soon will be!
\nThe most successful festivals have the kind of library support that Jesse offered, from financial support to a great facility to red carpet and popcorn! The youth program at the theater and great involvement there and by you at Spellbound Bookshop are starting our first festival off at a high level.
\nYou recently made two films in one week with a group of kids in the youth program at the community theater. Any highlights you\u2019d like to share?<\/strong>
\nFirst, it was one heck of a week! We had a wonderful time working together helping the kids learn and create. I taught them a little about film and how films create tension and tell a story in such short bursts, unlike most plays.
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THE HUNDRED DRESSES, Hamilton-style!<\/p><\/div>
\nSince the festival encourages creativity, we wrote the scripts a wee bit differently from the books. We did ‘The Hundred Dresses’ as a rap musical, using some of the music from Hamilton<\/em>\u00a0\u2013 a show the kids know very well, so that was exciting.
\n‘Mr. Popper\u2019s Penguins<\/em>,’ in our film, is a whodunit mystery, with mystery music and lighting.\u00a0The Popper\u2019s<\/em> film was wonderfully chaotic, since we had 12 kids as penguins, 10 of them jumping out of an egg, with the other two being dumped from shipping boxes. All the kids got to be involved in the dance scene, which deteriorates into a fight and an arrest.
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Stop that cop!<\/p><\/div>
\nWe gave the kids silly string so they could silly string the two police officer characters who tried to break up the chaos. Of course, my helper and I spent a lot of time after that scraping silly string off the stage since there was a show the next day.
\nThe kids quickly learned the difference between stage acting and film acting \u2013 especially short films! They thought they just learned the lines and then got to rehearse a lot<\/em>. Nope.\u00a0 Discuss a scene, run it once and then shoot it several times. And change it every time.
\n

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Old Man Svenson’s Yellow House and Yellow Dog<\/p><\/div>
\nThe other fun thing the kids found out was that we shoot film scenes out of order, shooting the ending before we even shot the opening \u2013 all because of costuming and when we could do what where.
\nOne of the ‘Mr.<\/em> Popper\u2019s Penguins’<\/em> kids first wanted to be my assistant, so he held the boom mike\u2026 then he decided it was so much fun that he begged to be in the film \u2013 something that really surprised his mother, who said this was the most excited she\u2019d seen him in a long time. Many parents wrote to say how they\u2019d not seen their kids so invested in something for some time.
\nAny advice for booksellers or librarians who would like to get kids involved in making and submitting films, or maybe even trying to get a screening in their town?<\/strong>
\nThe hardest part seems to be getting groups of kids (or teachers or librarians, or\u2026) who have the time to help choose\/read\/organize the book and film shoot. I\u2019m frequently telling people that it doesn\u2019t have to be fancy \u2013 kids can shoot it on their phones and edit easily. It doesn\u2019t take \u201cactors.\u201d The films just take creativity, and lots of kids have that when helped with a bit of structure (the adults\u2019 role). Films can be crayon drawings with a voiced story, or pipe cleaner characters, or real children playing the parts, or\u2026 you name it. Costuming is whatever you want it to be. Our festival will have space for 20 films. I hope Asheville kids fill at least 10 of those spots.\u00a0 James Kennedy will fill in the rest with \u201cbest of\u201d from other festivals.
\nJames is wonderful to work with if towns want their own festival. If you bring him in, there\u2019s some expense in terms of travel and some honorarium, but I\u2019m sure he\u2019d help in many other ways even if he didn\u2019t come to co-host.
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What more could you ask for?<\/p><\/div><\/p><\/blockquote>\n

There’s still time to submit a film to Asheville\u2019s 90-Second Newbery Film Festival, which happens in April and will be co-hosted by founder James Kennedy and emceed by Alan Gratz<\/a>. Alan is a local and author of the League of Seven<\/em>\u00a0series, Projekt 1065<\/em>, and the forthcoming Ban This Book<\/em> (Starscape, Sept. 2017). Check the 90-Second Newbery website<\/a> for submission deadlines and screenings, which vary by region. And if you work with kids and books, take it from me \u2013 this is a really fun way to get kids engaged with books on a whole different level. Maybe you should get some kids together for a filming or even look ahead to bringing a 90-Second Film Festival to your <\/em>town.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Bookseller Leslie Hawkins talks about the joys of bringing a 90-Second Newbery Film Festival screening to Asheville, N.C., in her first post for ShelfTalker.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":10,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-19948","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/blogs.publishersweekly.com\/blogs\/shelftalker\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/19948","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/blogs.publishersweekly.com\/blogs\/shelftalker\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/blogs.publishersweekly.com\/blogs\/shelftalker\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/blogs.publishersweekly.com\/blogs\/shelftalker\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/10"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/blogs.publishersweekly.com\/blogs\/shelftalker\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=19948"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"http:\/\/blogs.publishersweekly.com\/blogs\/shelftalker\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/19948\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/blogs.publishersweekly.com\/blogs\/shelftalker\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=19948"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/blogs.publishersweekly.com\/blogs\/shelftalker\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=19948"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/blogs.publishersweekly.com\/blogs\/shelftalker\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=19948"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}