Author, Publisher and Professor Anita Silvey discusses the legacy of Virginia Lee Burton

Anita Silvey, author of 100 Best Books for Children and Everything I Need to Know I Learned from a Children’s Book, presents a closer look at the legacy of Virginia Lee Burton. Offered in conjunction with The Little House: Her Story exhibition. Free for Museum members; $10 for nonmembers.

Reservations required. Sign up online at Eventbrite or call (978) 283-0455 x10.

About Anita Silvey
Anita Silvey has devoted 40 years to promoting books that will turn young children, and families, into readers. She has appeared frequently on NPR, The Today Show, 60 Minutes, and various radio programs to talk about some of the 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 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.

About Virginia Lee Burton
Virginia Lee Burton was born in Newton Center, Massachusetts. Her father was the first dean of the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, and her mother, a poet, was from England. When her father retired, the family moved to California, first to San Diego and then to Carmel-by-the-Sea. She and her sister studied dance, and Virginia took art classes in high school where she was awarded a scholarship to the California School of Fine Arts in San Francisco. She attended for one year and then left to join her father who had returned to Boston. She worked as an illustrator for the Boston Transcript, then in the fall of 1930 she enrolled in sculptor George Demetrios’ drawing class at the Boston Museum School, and the following spring the two were married. They settled in Folly Cove on Cape Ann in 1932 and had two sons. In addition to forming and leading the Folly Cove Designers, Burton wrote and illustrated children’s books including: Choo Choo (1935), Mike Mulligan and His Steam Shovel (1939), Calico the Wonder Horse (1941), The Little House (1942), Katy and the Big Snow (1943), The Song of Robin Hood (1947), The Emperor’s New Clothes (1949), Mable, the Cable Car (1952) and Life Story (1962).