Once upon a time there was a lady who loved children’s books.
She loved them so much that she decided to share that love with others.
“Children are at a stage where the power of a story can be so memorable,” says Anita Silvey, who estimates she has read 125,000 children’s books in her lifetime as a publisher of children’s books and a reviewer and editor of The Horn Book Magazine.
“I love new books for children and have been involved with them all my life,” says Silvey, who typically reads 15,000 new manuscripts each year as a publisher for Houghton Mifflin. “But it’s so important that children don’t miss `Charlotte’s Web’ or `Mike Mulligan.'”
To help guide parents and grandparents when it comes to selecting books, Silvey has authored “100 Best Books for Children: A Parent’s Guide to Making the Right Choices for Your Young Reader, Toddler and Preteen.” (Houghton Mifflin, $9.95.) She previously edited “Children’s Books and Their Creators.”
In addition to providing recommendations for each age group and summarizing the plot, Silvey offers interesting tidbits and background information about the authors and their books. Her readers will learn how difficult is was for many of the “greats” to get published, including Virginia Hamilton of Yellow Springs, who eventually won “an incredible number of awards” for her work:
“One day Virginia Hamilton confided her disappointment about the rejection of her adult novel to her college friend Janet Schulman,” Silvey says. “Schulman remembered a story that Hamilton had written in college about a Watusi princess and suggested it would make an excellent children’s novel. The resulting book, “Zeely,” launched Hamilton’s career in 1967.”
“Dr. Seuss was turned down 27 times. He was going back to his apartment to burn the manuscript for “And To Think That I Saw it on Mulberry Street” when he ran into an old Dartmouth friend who had just been named children’s book editor of a small press. The friend was searching for books.”
“And did you know that Robert McCloskey (author of “Make Way for Ducklings”) kept ducks in his bathtub?”
Silvey, who re-read all of the books she recommended, is certain reading to a child is one of the most important developmental things that can happen in a youngster’s life.
“My own mother read poetry to me before I did the dishes, and when I pick up those poems — everything from Little Boy Blue to Robert Burns and Oscar Wilde — I can still hear the sound of her voice. I didn’t understand the content but I began to gain the sense of the language.”
To select the top 100 books, Silvey consulted both critics and ordinary folks across the country — asking those she met to name their favorite book from childhood.
“It was like watching people’s eyes light up,” she says. “They not only remembered the book, they remembered the adult who gave it to them, and the setting in which it was read. It was like I was opening for them this memory of a wonderful moment in their lives.”