'It was a sleepless night': Sheila Nevins opens up on her Oscar-nominated film 'The ABCs of Book Banning'

LOS ANGELES, CALIFORNIA: Sheila Nevins has earned first Oscar nomination with her directorial debut 'The ABCs of Book Banning', from MTV Documentary Films.

The 84-year-old, who has won over 30 Emmy Awards, said “It was a sleepless night. It’s always a sleepless night. This was a particularly sleepless night.”

Sheila Nevins' documentary focuses on children's reaction on ban

Talking more about her project, which has been co-directed by Nazenet Habtezghi and Trish Adlesic and produced by Adlesic, probes the rise of book banning in US schools.

It interviews children on how they feel after a few books are taken off their library shelves.

“Children care a lot about what they read because they can't get on a plane and they can't look at the world except through books,” Nevins told People.

“And so books are their sight. Books are the way they see what's out there, what was, what is, what will become,” she added.

The motivation behind making the documentary was 101-year-old Grace Linn, “She was talking about this disgrace of banning books in that particular school district,” Nevins said.

“I really didn't know very much about book banning, but she inspired me to look into it. Then, I thought, ‘We have to make this film,'” she said.

Sheila Nevins explains rise in banning of books in the US

On reaching out to children instead of educators and parents, she said “We didn't want it to appear as a children's film, which it certainly is not. But the stars of it are really the children and their books.”

“We were astounded to find the kind of books that were banned for children,” Nevins told the outlet.

“Everything from ['And Tango Makes Three'] to the graphic [novelization of] 'Anne Frank.' The span of censure was quite extraordinary. And the censorship in general was overwhelming,” she added.

“I realized what a big part books had played in my life, and that I really formed a lot of what I loved and thought about the world from the books that I read,” she says. “And to think that young children were going to be deprived [of] that; it scared me,” she continued.

Nevins concluded, “It's a tough world that children are growing up in now. It's a world with war. It's a world where the planet is in danger. I would want them to be informed about the world they live in so that they can make it a safer and better place.”