Biography

The author of 100 Best Books for Chil­dren and 500 Great Books for Teens Ani­ta Sil­vey has devot­ed 40 years to pro­mot­ing books that will turn the young — and fam­i­lies — into read­ers. To do this she has appeared fre­quent­ly on NPR, The Today Show, 60 Min­utes, and radio pro­grams in the Unit­ed States and Cana­da to talk about books for chil­dren and teenagers. As Pub­lish­er’s Week­ly has said “It would be hard to find a more author­i­ta­tive voice than Ani­ta Silvey.”

As pub­lish­er of children’s books for Houghton Mif­flin Com­pa­ny from 1995–2001, she over­saw all the children’s book and young adult pub­lish­ing for both the Houghton and Clar­i­on lists, includ­ing such well-known authors and illus­tra­tors as H. A. and Mar­gret Rey, Vir­ginia Lee Bur­ton, David Macaulay, Lois Lowry, Allen Say, David Wies­ner, Karen Cush­man, Lin­da Sue Park, and Chris Van Allsburg.

In a unique career in the children’s book field, Ms. Sil­vey has divid­ed her time equal­ly between pub­lish­ing and eval­u­at­ing children’s books. But her life­long con­vic­tion that “only the very best of any­thing can be good enough for the young” forms the cor­ner­stone of all of her work. Pri­or to her role as pub­lish­er, Ms. Sil­vey served for eleven years as Edi­tor-in-Chief of The Horn Book Mag­a­zine, a pub­li­ca­tion many call “the Bible of children’s lit­er­a­ture.” As Edi­tor of Horn Book, she read sev­er­al thou­sand books a year, hunt­ing for those of excep­tion­al qual­i­ty that chil­dren return to again and again.

Ms. Sil­vey is the edi­tor of Children’s Books and Their Cre­ators, an overview of 20th Cen­tu­ry children’s books. As she says in this vol­ume, “Life is a ban­quet and most of us starve,” when it comes to knowl­edge about books for young read­ers. Shar­ing her pas­sion and enthu­si­asm, she gives guid­ance and back­ground for those try­ing to find the best books to give to the young. Lit­tle Brown pub­lished her selec­tion of short sto­ries for young adults, Help Want­ed. Houghton Mif­flin pub­lished The Essen­tial Guide to Children’s Books and Their Cre­ators in 2002, 100 Best Books for Chil­dren in 2004, 500 Great Books for Teens in 2006, and The Chil­dren’s-Book-a-Day Alman­ic in 2012. In 2008 Clar­i­on Books pub­lished her first book writ­ten for chil­dren, I’ll Pass for Your Com­rade: Women Sol­diers in the Civ­il War. Hen­ry Knox: Book­seller, Sol­dier, Patri­ot fol­lowed in 2010 and The Plant Hunters was pub­lished in 2012. Most recent­ly, Ani­ta has pub­lished Undaunt­ed: The Wild Life of Biruté Mary Galdika and Her Fear­less Quest to Save Orang­utans, Unfor­got­ten: The Wild Life of Dian Fos­sey and Her Relent­less Quest to Save Moun­tain Goril­las, Untamed: The Wild Life of Jane Goodall, and Let Your Voice Be Heard: the Life and Times of Pete Seeger.

Ms. Sil­vey served on the board of the Unit­ed States sec­tion of the Inter­na­tion­al Board on the Books for Young Peo­ple. She chaired the 1989 Lau­ra Ingalls Wilder Award Com­mit­tee and the New Eng­land Round Table of Children’s Librar­i­ans. Ms. Sil­vey co-found­ed a lit­er­ary pub­li­ca­tion, The Boston Review. She served as Pres­i­dent of the Children’s Book Council.

Cur­rent­ly a mem­ber of the Edi­to­r­i­al Board of Crick­et Mag­a­zine, she teach­es “Mod­ern Book Pub­lish­ing” at the Sim­mons Col­lege Grad­u­ate School of Library Sci­ence in Boston and “Children’s Book Author Stud­ies” at St. Michael’s Col­lege in Burling­ton, Ver­mont. She lec­tures through­out the Unit­ed States on chil­dren’s books and reading.

Ms. Sil­vey has been giv­en numer­ous awards, includ­ing The Women’s Nation­al Book Asso­ci­a­tion Book Women Award in 1987. In Octo­ber 1994, for a bicen­ten­ni­al cel­e­bra­tion, she received an award from the city of Fort Wayne, Indi­ana, as one of the thir­ty-eight famous sons and daugh­ters of the city. In July of 2000 she was award­ed an hon­orary Mas­ter in Fine Arts in Chil­dren’s Book Writ­ing by Ver­mont Col­lege in Mont­pe­lier, Ver­mont. She is also a mem­ber of two hon­orary orga­ni­za­tions, the Soci­ety of Print­ers and the Amer­i­can Anti­quar­i­an Soci­ety. In Jan­u­ary of 2008 she recieved the Lud­ing­ton Award of the Edu­ca­tion­al Paper­back Asso­ci­a­tion for her life­time of ded­i­ca­tion to chil­dren and books. In 2009 The Asso­ci­a­tion of Edu­ca­tion­al Pub­lish­ers gave their Dis­tin­guished Achieve­ment Award to Ms. Sil­vey’s SLJ arti­cle, “Has the New­bery Lost Its Way?”