Kim Griggs on our staff recommended a book to me months ago, The Reading Promise: My Father and the Books We Shared by Alice Ozma. She felt it might remind me a bit of the family tradition I have often mentioned of a weekly trek to the library with my Dad. In truth, it did far more.

The book did sharpen my memories of how and where my love of reading started. But further, it  taught me how reading to children can create not only a lifelong love of literature, but also an unbreakable bond created when one person takes the time to read to another. In our time starved, technology fueled world, I do believe that what our kids want from us more than anything else, is time. The Reading Promise centers on the author and her father who vow to have him read to her for fifteen minutes, every night for 100 consecutive evenings. It morphs into a much bigger commitment, and author Alice Ozma and her father, an elementary school librarian, stretch their promise for 8 years until the day she departs for college. Poignant, funny, but never overly sentimental, this book is a testament to the mutual benefits created by reading aloud.

Oddly enough, I did read to my children long after they could read themselves, before I had the pleasure of reading Ozma’s book. I found that at age 8 or 9, we could delve into books that the kids couldn’t quite tackle yet on their own.  Those nightly sessions of The Chronicles of Narnia read to my then 6 and 8 year old girls are nights I truly treasure.  And when my son was 5 or so, it was almost a guilty pleasure to delve into Harry Potter and the Sorcerer’s Stone with him while his sisters were busy gobbling through the latest release in that series. It allowed my son to participate in their conversations. The world of books brought us all into conversations that we wouldn’t have otherwise had. A recent summer had all five us reading The Hunger Games Trilogy so we could debate whether the movie stacked up to the print version.

The Reading Promise is a poignant reminder of the need to keep reading to our kids in a society that is stuffed with distractions – from constant technology to lessons designed to fill their every hour. We owe it to the next generation to introduce them to the pleasure of being lost in the company of a good book. A good place to start is here.