Alice Ozma's 'The Reading Promise'

Imagine this: your nine-year-old daugher asks you to promise to read her a story every day for a hundred days. Then, once the habit gets going and a streak is underway, the reading lasts for 3,218 days until your daugher leaves for college.

This is the basic story behind Alice Ozma's book The Reading Promise: My Father and the Books We Shared . I like the concept of the promise, the idea that stories and story time can mean a lot and make a difference, and then become a tradition.

Osma told NPR that "I think that once you start something like that, it's very difficult to stop; it seems very weird after 100 nights of reading in a row to say, 'Let's not read tonight.'"

My parents read me stories when I was young. I don't think any of us thought about continuing the streak until we left home for college. At some point, my brothers and I shifted over to reading the books we received for birthdays and Christmas, and then those we could check out from the school library.

We had other traditions, one of them being our own "Jeopardy"-style question and answer game that we played from time to time around the dinner table. This was our tradition. The idea, in this day and time, that families can establish traditions, whether they're storytelling or reading, is one that gives me confidence that we, as a people, are not as doomed as some of the news reports might make us appear.

The Reading Promise was released in May from Grand Central Publishing. Publisher's Weekly wrote in its review that "Ozma's account percolates chronologically through her adolescence, as father and daughter persevered in their streak of nightly reading despite occasional inconveniences such as coming home late, sleepovers (they read over the phone), and a rare case of the father's laryngitis. Ozma's work is humorous, generous, and warmly felt, and with a terrific reading list included, there is no better argument for the benefits of reading to a child than this rich, imaginative work."

I hope the book is a success and gives a lot of parents and children the idea of doing the same thing.

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--Malcolm