The 90-Second Newbery Film Festival is an annual event in which kid filmmakers create short movies that tell the entire stories of Newbery-winning books in about 90 seconds. (The Newbery Medal is the highest honor in children's literature.) The movies these kids make often have a bonkers creative twist -- think "Charlotte's Web" in the style of a horror movie, or "Holes" reimagined as a musical set in outer space!

For the past 7 years, we've shown the best kid-made movies in packed-house special screenings in libraries across the country. In 2019 we have screenings scheduled in New York, Brooklyn, Chicago, Boston, San Francisco, Minneapolis, Oakland, Salt Lake City, Tacoma, and other cities. These FREE events are co-hosted by me (founder James Kennedy) and other award-winning kids' authors.

We receive over 500 movies per year. All of these kid-made movies, regardless of quality, gets a positive and encouraging review on the 90-Second Newbery website. Librarians, teachers, and young filmmakers have appreciated the personal attention each movie receives. Additionally, the lineup of the movies at each screening changes from city to city to highlight local entries. Kids who make a movie who happen to live in a city with a screening have an excellent chance of seeing their movie featured on the big screen, to be enjoyed by hundreds! These participants bring their friends and family to the screenings, which gives us consistently packed-house audiences. In many schools and libraries, the making and the celebrating of their 90-Second Newbery movies has become a traditional annual event that folks look forward to all year.

The project has 3 major prongs: (1) the book-to-movie filmmaking workshops I teach in libraries and schools in the fall, (2) the 14-city tour of screenings in the spring, and (3) the affirming personalized reviews of each and every movie on the 90-Second Newbery website.