Graton Writing Project and Half Price Books

Festival offers outdoor fair, author sessions for kids

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literature, the Newbery Medal, and runnersup known as Honor Books. Author and film festival founder James Kennedy will present a “Best of the Best” screening of the short films at the Bay Area Book Festival, Saturday, May 7 at 2:30 p.m. at the Berkeley Public Library’s Community Meeting Room.

“Back in 2010, just for fun, I made a movie of ‘A Wrinkle in Time’ with my niece and nephew and their friends,” recalls Kennedy, who also named the novel as one of his favorites growing up. “It was the first movie I’d ever made, and we were really surprised at how easy and fun moviemaking could be with modern equipment and software — I really wish I had iMovie when I was a kid!”

After he put their movie online, Kennedy says he invited others to make their own videos based on any Newberywinning book.

“Our video went semiviral and we received hundreds of movies for our newly minted film festival, and we were off and running,” he says.

The screenings in Berkeley will include several contributions by young Bay Area readers. A duo named Astral and Defy, who have been participating in the 90Second Newbery for years, “made a wonderfully creepy adaptation of the similarly creepy book, Christian McKay Heidicker’s 2020 Honor Book ‘Scary Stories for Young Foxes,’ ” Kennedy notes. He also praised a movie of Carl Hiaasen’s 2003 Honor Book “Hoot” made by fourth graders of Gordon J. Lau Elementary in San Francisco, calling it “full of energy and charisma.”

The Newbery festivities continue at the Bay Area Book Festival with a special panel commemorating the 100th anniversary of the awards featuring two recent winners, Donna Barba Higuera and Tae Keller, in conversation Saturday, May 7 at 12:30 p.m. on the outdoor Young Readers Stage.

Higuera received this year’s medal for “The Last Cuentista,” a dystopian novel for middlegrade readers (ages 8 to 12) in which a young girl keeps memories of Earth alive for a small community who were able to escape its destruction by a comet. Keller earned Newbery’s top prize in 2021 for “When You Trap a Tiger,” another novel for middlegrade readers that highlights the power of stories, in this case by tapping into Korean folk tales told by a girl’s ailing grandmother.

Of course, a book doesn’t have to be a Newbery winner to strike a deep chord with young readers.

For Brooke Warner, chair of the Bay Area Book Festival’s board of directors, Roald Dahl’s 1983 “The Witches” had “a lasting impact” because her mother read it aloud to her and her younger brother, “and it opened my eyes to the wonder of the fantastical,” she recalls.

Readers looking for a similar experience will want to attend a Festival session Sunday, May 8 at 1:30 p.m. with bestselling author Dhonielle Clayton, making her middlegrade debut

»“Now, as a mom, I love having the opportunity to revisit that novel, as I’ve read it aloud to both of my sons.”

Norah Piehl, the festival’s director for literary programs, on reading Madeleine L’Engle's “A Wrinkle in Time”

Lily Anderson Donna Barba Higuera James Kennedy