Anita Silvey Receives Norton Juster Award for Devotion to Literacy

Reader to Reader is pleased to announce that Anita Silvey is the 2012 recipient of the Norton Juster Award for Devotion to Literacy.

The award is given out annually by Reader to Reader to honor people that have had a significant impact on literacy.

Past award winners include Norton Juster, Jane Yolen, Wendell Minor and Roger Sutton.

The award was presented at the opening reception for the 23rd Annual Children's Illustration Exhibit, which was held on November 11 at the R. Michelson Galleries in Northampton, Massachusetts.

The award was presented by author Norton Juster (whom the award was renamed in honor of in 2009) and Reader to Reader founder David Mazor.

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.

”We are very pleased to recognize Anita Silvey’s passion for children’s literature and the key role she has played in helping others identify books worth giving and reading to their children,” David Mazor said.