Up All Night Reading

Up All Night:
A History of the National Book Awards in Young People’s Literature
An Online Exhibition

Remember what it was like to be a kid, so immersed in a great book that you stayed up past your bedtime voraciously turning pages? Or perhaps you’re a young reader now, struggling to find a story that speaks to you and reflects your surroundings and experiences. Whether you want to revisit your favorite childhood reads or discover a title or author that is totally new to you, you’ve come to the right place.

The National Book Award in Children’s Literature was first presented to the Dutch-American author Meindert DeJong for Journey from Peppermint Street in 1969. Since then, the category has had many names and included several subcategories, from Nonfiction to Picture Book, and there were a number of years when the National Book Award wasn’t presented in this category at all.* It returned in 1996, however, and has been known ever since as Young People’s Literature―an umbrella that has covered everything from graphic novels to novels-in-verse.

To present the 235 titles that have won and been nominated for the National Book Award in this category, we enlisted the help of past National Book Award Winners and Finalists, winners of our Innovations in Reading Prize, students in our after-school reading program for middle-schoolers, BookUp, and others. Their contributions, which range from interviews and videos to collages and other artworks, are listed below.

This exhibition is for everyone: grandparents, parents, children, teachers, librarians, writers, and, of course, readers. It’s also for all those self-professed non-readers out there. We guarantee there’s something in here even for you.

Thanks for visiting, and enjoy the exhibition!

*From 1950 through 1963, the National Book Award was presented only in the categories of Fiction, Nonfiction, and Poetry. Additional categories, such as Arts and Letters, were introduced in 1964, but the Award for Children’s Books didn’t appear until 1969. It continued in various forms through 1983, when the Awards were again reduced to only three categories. The Award for children’s literature didn’t appear again until 1996, when its current iteration, Young People’s Literature, was introduced.

1971: The Marvelous Misadventures of Sebastian by Lloyd Alexander (William Alexander)

1971: Frog and Toad Are Friends by Arnold Lobel (Steve Sheinkin and Anna Sheinkin)

1972: The Tombs of Atuan by Ursula LeGuin (William Alexander)

1973: The Farthest Shore by Ursula LeGuin (William Alexander)

1974: Poor Richard in France by F.N. Monjo (Gary D. Schmidt)

1981: Jacob Have I Loved by Katherine Paterson (Jennifer duBois; Chelsey Philpot)

1981: The Westing Game by Ellen Raskin (YARN/Diana Renn)

1982: The Fledgling by Jane Langton (readergirlz)

1982: The Angry Moon by William Sleator (Ned Vizzini)

1982: A Visit to William Blake’s Inn: Poems for Innocent and Experienced Travelers by Nancy Willard (Chelsey Philpot)

1983: Tiger Eyes by Judy Blume (Chelsey Philpot)

1983: Miss Rumphius by Barbara Cooney (Gary D. Schmidt)

1996: A Girl Named Disaster by Nancy Farmer (Eliot Schrefer)

1998: Joey Pigza Swallowed the Key by Jack Gantos (Gary D. Schmidt)

1999: When Zachary Beaver Came to Town by Kimberly Willis Holt (BookUpTX students, Walker County, Texas)

2001: Carver: A Life in Poems by Marilyn Nelson (Leslie Reese/Literacy Chicago’s Reading Against the Odds)

2002: Feed by M.T. Anderson (Carrie Arcos)

2004: Godless by Pete Hautman (YARN/Lourdes Keochgerien)

2005: Inexcusable by Chris Lynch (Carrie Arcos)

2006: Sold by Patricia McCormick (readergirlz/Lorie Ann Grover; Clara Greider and Diana Varenik)

2006: American Born Chinese by Gene Luen Yang (YARN/Kerri Majors, Toni McIntyre, and Julia Wang)

2007: The Absolutely True Diary of a Part-Time Indian by Sherman Alexie (BookUpNYC students at I.S. 318; Carole Mashamesh)

2007: Story of a Girl by Sara Zarr (Lilli Leight)

2008: The Disreputable History of Frankie Landau-Banks by E. Lockhart (Daniel Ehrenhaft)

2009: Stitches by David Small (Gary D. Schmidt)

2010: Ship Breaker by Paolo Bacigalupi (William Alexander)

2011: Inside Out & Back Again by Thanhha Lai (Eliot Schrefer; Hannah Quirk)

2011: Okay for Now by Gary D. Schmidt (readergirlz/Dia Calhoun; Carole Mashamesh with her students at Tompkins Square Middle School)

2012: Goblin Secrets by William Alexander (Marly Youmans)

2012: Out of Reach by Carrie Arcos (Sydney Mok and Susan Wu of BookUpNYC at University Settlement; BookUpNYC students at Kingsbridge Heights Community Center; Jordan Triplett)

2012: Never Fall Down by Patricia McCormick (Literacy Chicago’s Reading Against the Odds/Angela Halls and Leslie Reese; Sarah Chin of BookUpNYC at University Settlement)

2012: Endangered by Eliot Schrefer (Lilli Leight; Diane Tuccillo)

PRODUCTION CREDITS:

Image by Miguel Guerra
Exhibition design and layout by Meredith Andrews
Book and author information compiled by Amy Gall
Appreciations curated and edited by Rebecca Keith
Copywriting and editing by Katie McDonough

Keturah and Lord Death

By Martine Leavitt

Current Publisher: Front Street Books (Boyds Mills Press)
Digital Publisher: Namelos

Reading Level: Ages 13 & Up

YPL Finalists That Year:

Martine Leavitt for Keturah and Lord Death
Patricia McCormick for Sold
Nancy Werlin for The Rules of Survival
Gene Luen Yang for American Born Chinese

YPL Winner That Year: M.T. Anderson for The Astonishing Life of Octavian Nothing, Traitor to the Nation, Vol. 1: The Pox Party

Judges That Year: Margaret Bechard, Patricia McKissack, Linda Sue Park, Benjamin Alire Sáenz, Jude Watson

The Year in Literature: Criss Cross by Lynne Rae Perkins won the Newbery Medal. Looking for Alaska by John Green won the Printz Award.

More Information: Leavitt’s books have been translated into more than five different languages, including Dutch and Korean. The Italian edition of her 2004 book, Heck Superhero, was a finalist for the Premio Paolo Ungari/Unicef in 2008.

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