Anita Silvey

Friday, 12:00 noon, "Everything I Need to Know I Learned From a Children's Book"

Anita Silvey provides insights into the question that has informed her entire career—what are the best books for children to read and what do adults remember about them? Only in the case of this book, those adults now happen to be among our most respected and admired leaders in society. In her speech Anita will not only talk about some of our great children’s books, but also those they inspired. She’ll tell stories about the books that shaped financiers Peter Lynch and Steve Forbes, actor Kirk Douglas and actresses Kathy Bates and Julianne Moore, folk singer hero Pete Seeger and country singer Brad Paisley, activist Robert F. Kennedy, Jr., artist Andrew Wyeth, and comic book creator Stan Lee. Anita will also show how even specific lines in children’s books have charted the course of people’s careers and highlight the roles that parents, librarians, and teachers have played in shaping our national heroes.

Biography
Anita Silvey is the author of 100 Best Books for Children, 500 Great Books for Teens, and her most recent Everything I Need to Know I Learned from a Children’s Book. Anita has devoted 40 years to promoting books that will turn the young—and families—into readers. She has appeared frequently on NPR, “The Today Show,” “60 Minutes,” and various radio programs to talk about our best books for young people. In a unique career in the children’s book field, Ms. Silvey has divided her time equally between publishing, evaluating children’s books, and writing. Her lifelong conviction that “only the very best of anything can be good enough for the young” forms the cornerstone of her work. Formerly publisher of children’s books for Houghton Mifflin Company and Editor-in-Chief of The Horn Book Magazine, she currently teaches modern book publishing, children’s book publishing, and children’s book author studies at several colleges. www.anitasilvey.com