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21st out of 123 books
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271 voters
The Reading Promise: My Father and the Books We Shared
When Alice Ozma was in 4th grade, she and her father decided to see if he could read aloud to her for 100 consecutive nights. On the hundreth night, they shared pancakes to celebrate, but it soon became evident that neither wanted to let go of their storytelling ritual. So they decided to continue what they called "The Streak." Alice's father read aloud to her every night...more
Hardcover, 304 pages
Published
May 3rd 2011
by Grand Central Publishing
(first published 2011)
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This book was released in the Spring of 2011 so it's a relatively newish read. I also like how it's available in hardcover only because this reminds me of some of the most classic library books and as Alice's dad, Jim, said (something along the lines to it) in the book "Paperback just doesn't last as long."
I think this would make the perfect Father's Day present for a small child to give to his or her father. I can see it now that they can start a Reading Promise on their own whether it's to re...more
I think this would make the perfect Father's Day present for a small child to give to his or her father. I can see it now that they can start a Reading Promise on their own whether it's to re...more
This is a wonderful book. Some of the chapters were laugh-out-loud funny. A couple times, as I was reading while Ellie nursed, I looked down to find that she had stopped nursing and was laughing along with me! :)
As a lover of books and reading, this book hit [almost] all the right notes for me. Her last few chapters (after The Streak ended) were not as compelling. But other than that, a great book.
As a teacher, I read out loud to my students a few times a year. I usually read them "Pippi Longst...more
As a lover of books and reading, this book hit [almost] all the right notes for me. Her last few chapters (after The Streak ended) were not as compelling. But other than that, a great book.
As a teacher, I read out loud to my students a few times a year. I usually read them "Pippi Longst...more
I love reading and it started in my childhood from my parent's sharing their love of books with me. I can't wait to read Ozma's story.
3/22/11: Read this book in one day. I LOVED it. (I'm a little prejudiced as I share her love of reading). I thoroughly enjoyed learning of the books she read and how they affected her life, but it was how she told her story that made the book so enjoyable. I loved reading her memories of childhood and of her relationship with her father whom she read with. It wa...more
3/22/11: Read this book in one day. I LOVED it. (I'm a little prejudiced as I share her love of reading). I thoroughly enjoyed learning of the books she read and how they affected her life, but it was how she told her story that made the book so enjoyable. I loved reading her memories of childhood and of her relationship with her father whom she read with. It wa...more
I picked this book up at the airport to distract me during my four hour layover. It served that purpose quite well. The title of the book is misleading though not specious. The author clearly has an ardor for books and feels that they were a catalyst to the development of the strong bond that she and her father share. We are introduced to the books through opening chapter quotes that allude to the content of that section. However, the focus of the chapters is to retell some important transition...more
OK I'm going to do it...I'm going to give it 5 stars, which I never do. Not because it is the best book I've ever read, but because of the message. It is the true story of a father who promised to read to his daughter every night for 100 nights. When they hit the 100 night mark, they kept going and ended up reading every night from the time she was 9 years old until the day she left for college. I loved it. My favorite thing to do with my kids is read to them. We go to the library once a week, n...more
Great message glad to see that this book is touching many lives. We should all be so lucky as to have a school librarian, teacher, parentso committed to reading to children.
This is an enjoyable non-fiction title that's part memoir and part passionate plug for reading. Ozma, who is in her early 20's, grew up in New Jersey in a single-parent household. Her father, the custodial parent, is a (now retired) elementary school librarian. When she was around 10, when her mother moved out and her older sister went off to college, the two started what they called a "reading streak." For 8 years, until Ozma herself left for college, her father read to her for at least 10 minu...more
Alice’s father had read to her since she was a very young child, but it wasn’t until she was eleven that they set a distinct goal- to read for 100 consecutive nights. The exact details of how they came to that agreement differ depending on who’s telling the story, but 100 nights is definite. When the momentous night arrived, they celebrated the next morning with breakfast at a favorite local restaurant. The cook/owner came over to ask about the reason for the celebration and the ensuing discussi...more
Alice and her father decide when she is 8 years old to have her father read to her every night for at least 10 minutes for 100 nights. Once they get to 100 nights, they update their goal to 1,000 nights. They keep it going for 10 years and do not miss a night. They call it "The Streak." This is a true story written in small essays by Alice. She wrote this book when she was 22 years old and just out of college. She does a good job. Initially when I started it I thought it would be more about the...more
This book starts a little unsure of itself but gains strength and momentum as you keep reading. This is a book about the love a young woman has for her father. She respects him for his qualities and for his failures, using her reading pact with him as a timeline of significant events in her life as she grows from a young girl to adulthood. Reading is the bond that ties them together, but it is obvious there is a respectful and loving bond between the two beyond their nightly agreement to read to...more
Alice and her father decided at age 8 that he was going to read to her at least 10 minutes a day for 90 days. When they reached the 90 days they decided to keep going and keep up 'The Streak' as they called it, until her first day of College, 3,218 nights later. At first, I was disappointed in the book because it seemed more of a memoir of a girl in a divorced family, but then I began to realize that during those 10 or more minutes each night Alice had the undivided attention of her father as h...more
In a time when fatherlessness is growing at an alarming rate... In a time when technology and standards based testing threaten to steal the joy out of reading for children all over America, this book is a ray of hope. Alice Ozma, named by her father after two of his favorite literary heroines, writes this series of vignettes to chronicle "The Streak," a promise she and her father made and kept to read together every night for 100 days. When the reached 100, they stretched their goal to 1000 nigh...more
The concept of "The Streak," and anything that promotes reading to kids is great. Reading to your own kids is surely a marvelous thing. I'm glad that Alice Ozma has been able to tell this story. She seems to have turned out pretty well despite her extremely messed up childhood.
However, no matter how many times she tells the reader what a great dad she had, I still don't believe her. I'm glad that she and her father found a way to connect through books. It's a shame he didn't have any other way o...more
However, no matter how many times she tells the reader what a great dad she had, I still don't believe her. I'm glad that she and her father found a way to connect through books. It's a shame he didn't have any other way o...more
At first I thought this was a really hard book to get into. It seemed that the author had been kind of a whiny and uninteresting child and I sort of wondered why the book received so many wonderful reviews. Then I got more involved with the book and it did indeed seem to make a great deal more sense.
First off ... I am a librarian. Books have been part of my life for as long as I can remember. My father tells patrons about when I was telling a new librarian how to find books on the old system of...more
First off ... I am a librarian. Books have been part of my life for as long as I can remember. My father tells patrons about when I was telling a new librarian how to find books on the old system of...more
From my book review blog:
My three-year-old, Lilah, promises me several times a day, “I’ll always be your baby.” I believe her. I’ve read Love You Forever; I know that when she’s 37 I’ll still be crawling across the floor to her at night.
My five-year-old, Benjamin, recently told me that, of course, I’d be able to take care of his kids when he grows up. After all, we’ll be living in the same house. I believe him, too; he will take pity on me in my dotage and bring me into his home. That kid walk...more
My three-year-old, Lilah, promises me several times a day, “I’ll always be your baby.” I believe her. I’ve read Love You Forever; I know that when she’s 37 I’ll still be crawling across the floor to her at night.
My five-year-old, Benjamin, recently told me that, of course, I’d be able to take care of his kids when he grows up. After all, we’ll be living in the same house. I believe him, too; he will take pity on me in my dotage and bring me into his home. That kid walk...more
I adored this book. It's as simple as that. When I taught Freshman Writing at a local university, one of the required assignments was a personal essay. This was, without fail, the hardest assignment of the semester and a challenge to teach. Alice Ozma, in my opinion, has perfected the art of the personal essay. Her tone is endearing, fun, and clear. I appreciated that I felt like this was just her normal writing--she wasn't putting on airs or trying to write something she isn't. This charming se...more
As a language arts/reading teacher I felt this was a must read title. Now that I've finished it I can say that it is also a must read title for any parent. This book with give you moments of laughter, sadness, and joy, as well as trips down memory lane! My husband and I have read to our daughter nearly every night of her life, starting before she was even born, and now she is reading with us and to us. We filled her Bookit chart for school tonight, doubling the teacher set goal of only 4 books f...more
I like this book a lot because: I'm a librarian and (obviously) an advocate of reading, especially reading aloud; it reminds me of how much the books I read as a kid have influenced my whole life; it affirms the hours and hours that my husband and I spent reading with our children as they were growing up; it exposes the very real danger that books and reading aloud face in the world of technology; it invites and inspires otheres to make a "Reading Promise," providing a contract to sign and a lis...more
This was a great book about a tradition that started that changed the father and daugther forever. They decided to read for 1000 nights. In the back of the book is a list of the books that they can remember to have read. I loved the nightly ritual and although some of the chapters were hard and I didn't always like the father I thought this was a great idea. I found it strange that they would need to have a promise to make reading every night happen. I was not thinking about fathers reading book...more
Alice Ozma's "The Reading Promise: My Father and the Books We Shared" is essentially, charming. Although, as Ozma admits in a blog post she recently wrote, the book might be a bit misleading to a reader expecting a book solely about the books Ozma read growing up. The novel does make note of the books her father read to her as a child, but it is more so based around Ozma and her father's relationship, and the ups and downs of growing up, whatever age you might be. My biggest criticism is the aut...more
This story, or collection of vignettes, is a testament to reading and I think also a girl's tribute to her father. It touches on some serious subjects but stops short of anything deep or profound, which in this instance is probably a good thing. The focus was on a girl and her father keeping a promise to read together every night, not her issues with her mostly absent mother and sister. I'm sure Alice could write a memoir detailing all her psychological issues related to the dysfunction of her f...more
I loved the concept but intensely disliked the book. I am amazed people thought it was well-written, because it felt like a little kid trying to write an adult book. I found the language stilted and conversations unrealistic. In spite of spending every night reading together, I never felt any warmth or affection between them.
There were some hints about a very troubled childhood, including a suicide attempt and abandonment by her mother. But, that is barely mentioned. In fact, the father is so c...more
There were some hints about a very troubled childhood, including a suicide attempt and abandonment by her mother. But, that is barely mentioned. In fact, the father is so c...more
12 likes · like · see review
You might ask yourself, a book about reading books? but yes, it is, and yes, it was fantastic! Alice Ozma is just barely out of college, but she writes with the voice of a much more seasoned author. Surely this is, in large part, due to the influence of her dear father and the books they read together, every night, for more than 3,000 nights in a row. IN A ROW! Talk about commitment. I wondered how an entire book could be based on this feat, and the answer is that doing something like this every...more
From my sixth grade teacher I learned the importance of reading aloud to children even after they are capable of reading to themselves. Hands down, my favorite school memory is the shared spellbound attention of my classmates as we rested our heads on our desks after lunch every day while Mrs. Cessna took us on a year-long journey through Ralph Moody’s Little Britches series.
In this memoir, the suitably named Alice Ozma [Brozina] tells of the pact she and her father, an elementary school librar...more
In this memoir, the suitably named Alice Ozma [Brozina] tells of the pact she and her father, an elementary school librar...more
This book was so interesting and enjoyable!! Here is part of why the book is so cool (from the acknowledgements): "To my ridiculously talented editor, Karen Kosztolnyik: thank you for believing that a twenty-two-year-old recent college grad could and should write a memoir without a ghostwriter!" I just think it is really cool that author is so young. A lot of twenty-one year olds don't have anything worth writing a memoir about, but Alice Ozma definitely did!
She and her father had "The Streak,"...more
She and her father had "The Streak,"...more
1 like · like · see review
a cute memoir by a young woman whose father read to her almost every night until she went away to college. when she was nine years old, they decided to try to make sure they read every day for 1000 days, which expanded to nine years. the author's father was a librarian in an elementary school, so he had a passion for children's literature & together, they read a mix of classics & newer books that he was screening for the library's collection. there are some funny stories about the length...more
5 likes · like · see review
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One of my top favorites of 2011 so far. Alice Ozma (you need to use both names together always) has written a wonderful book for readers, for young adults, for parents, for professionals, heck, for anyone who loves good books and good stories. She did not have the easiest of childhoods with a mother who had mental issues and left them when she was in grammar school, a sister so much older she wasn't around through a good bit of it, and family money struggles. But none of this is what really stan...more
Alice Ozma grew up in a book-lover's paradise, a bookish child with an elementary school librarian father enthusiastic about reading to her every, single evening, the two of them sharing lines they'd read, inside jokes about characters, etc. Before they began an official goal of reading together 100 nights in a row, they already came very near meeting that goal on a regular basis, skipping only a handful of nights. But making it an official gave them something firm to strive for, and once they'd...more
http://tammydotts.wordpress.com/2011/...
Once upon a time, a little girl and her father wanted to know if they could read aloud for 100 nights in a row. When they reached that milestone, they decided to keep going. Eventually, when the little girl went to college, the nightly reading stopped after 3,218 nights.
The Reading Promise: My Father and the Books We Shared by Alice Ozma uses those nights of reading as the frame for an episodic memoir that covers life in the Bronzina household from when Oz...more
Once upon a time, a little girl and her father wanted to know if they could read aloud for 100 nights in a row. When they reached that milestone, they decided to keep going. Eventually, when the little girl went to college, the nightly reading stopped after 3,218 nights.
The Reading Promise: My Father and the Books We Shared by Alice Ozma uses those nights of reading as the frame for an episodic memoir that covers life in the Bronzina household from when Oz...more
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“I think the root of embarrassment is feeling totally misunderstood, wanting to explain yourself over and over but knowing that you won't make much sense to anyone even if you do.”
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8 people liked it
“If a child sees something in a parent that the child aspires to, he or she will copy that parent and be content. If a children feel that a parent is living a life that shows compassion and understanding, patience and love, that child will not have to reach a stage of rebellion against that parent. Why rebel against someone who has listened to you and wants to help you fufill your dreams? A parent who has proven time and again that growth and happiness of his or her children is priority number one does not have to worry about where these children are heading in life. They will be sensitive and productive members of society for as long as they live.”
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8 people liked it
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