In 1975, Silvey was a co-founder of the publication that became the Boston Review. She served from 1985 to 1995 as Editor-in-Chief of The Horn Book Magazine. She also created the spin-off magazine The Horn Book Guide to Children's and Young Adult Books.

Between 1995 and 2001, Silvey worked as vice-president at Houghton Mifflin where she oversaw children’s and young adult book publishing for both the Houghton and Clarion divisions. Among illustrators and authors she promoted were David Wiesner, Chris Van Allsburg, Virginia Lee Burton, and Lois Lowry.

In 2002, Silvey published The Essential Guide to Children's Books and Their Creators, 100 Best Books for Children and 500 Great Books for Teens. She also penned a young adult book on women soldiers in the American Civil War, I’ll Pass for Your Comrade. In 2008, she wrote an influential School Library Journal in which she "criticized the Newbery selections as too difficult for most children." A series of interviews with people from all walks of life was published in Everything I Need to Know I Learned from a Children's Book in 2009.

Silvey is a member of the Editorial Board of Cricket Magazine and the Board of Directors for the Vermont Center for the Book. At Simmons College Graduate School of Library Science in Boston, Massachusetts she teaches “Modern Book Publishing” and at St. Michael’s College in Winooski, Vermont, she teaches "Children’s Book Author Studies".

Her hometown of Fort Wayne, Indiana honored her with an official award during the town's bicentennial celebration in 1994. In addition, Vermont College bestowed an honorary Master in Fine Arts in Children's Book Writing on Silvey in 2000. She is also the winner of the Women's National Book Association Book Women Award in 1987 and, in 2008, the Ludington Award of the Educational Paperback Association for her lifetime of dedication to children and books.