The National Book Foundation has launched Up All Night, an online exhibition of 228 children's titles, including picture books, novels, graphic novels, poetry, and nonfiction that have won or been nominated for the National Book Award in Young People's Literature. The exhibition features videos, interviews, collages, essays, poems, and other artwork contributed by 45 readers and writers from age six to 56 who were inspired by the titles.

William Alexander, the 2012 National Book Award Winner in Young People’s Literature, contributed essays and recordings of himself reading passages from The Tombs of Atuan and The Farthest Stone, both written by Ursula K. Le Guin as part of the Earthsea series. Alexander’s recordings illustrate some of LeGuin’s thoughts on her craft. She writes, “The sound of the language is where it all begins and what it all comes back to…. The basic elements of language are physical: the noise words make and the rhythm of their relationships.”

Steve Sheinkin, a 2012 National Book Award Finalist in Young People’s Literature, interviewed his six-year-old daughter, Anna, on Frog and Toad Are Friends by Arnold Lobel. She said: “Something I like is that even if they disagree they’re still friends and they still like each other.”

Other contributors include Lilli Leight, 16-year-old recipient of the Foundation’s Innovations in Reading Prize, who contributed an essay about Story of a Girl by Sara Zarr; BookUp students from Walker County, Texas, contributed a video of a news report casting themselves as the main character and the townspeople from When Zachary Beaver Came to Town by Kimberly Willis Holt; and Chelsey Philpot, an editor at School Library Journal, contributed several pieces, including six-word memoirs for the characters in Tiger Eyes by Judy Blume.

View all the artwork here.