The Reading Promise: My Father and the Books We Shared

The premise of this book hooked me right away: a father and daughter, making a pledge to read together, every night for a hundred nights. Once that was completed, they decide to continue to push on and amazingly, the “streak” lasts over 3000 nights. Wonderful, right? Yes and no.
I respect their commitment, it is an astonishing feat, but this story is, more a memoir of growing up, with a single Dad, narrated by the daughter in a perfectly precocious manner. I am not knocking it for that reason but I was expecting more…well book talk. Sure, books are mentioned but not in the passionate, detailed, geeky way, I was craving. Maybe, I’m being selfish, who knows? You might have to judge for yourself. I am crazy about that cover though!

I loved the memoir structure. By delving into the relationship between daughter and father, avoiding d'autres and place names mostly, but the chronology relative to the reading streak, I could get a sense of how the progress of keeping it going grounded and challenged them. Other reviewers' objections to what was left out don't seem important to me. A memoir is not an autobiography, where all must be revealed; it is focused through a lens on a time or theme of the author's choosing. I really enjoyed Alice Ozma's choices.

In Webster’s parlance, a “streak” is defined as “a brief run” or “consecutive series”, but in Alice Ozma’s loving memoir, it represents a significant promise from a father to engage his daughter in the continuous enchantment of books.

In 1997, James Brozina, suggested to his nine year old, that they read at least 10 minutes for 100 successive nights.

When that commitment was completed, the two celebrated at their treasured “Flick’s Café.” There, Alice announced, “I have been giving this a lot of consideration. Deep consideration. And after this consideration, I have decided that it is only logical for us to go for a thousand nights.”

Though daunting, and despite occasional Coming-of-Age school obligations, dates, show more and The Prom, Brozina honored the pact; he read to Alice every single night. When social obligations potentially interfered with The Streak, the book-in-process was sometimes narrated over the telephone.

Along the way, they absorbed the luminescent literature of William Shakespeare, Charles Dickens and Lewis Carroll; Edgar Allan Poe, L. Frank Baum and Sir Arthur Conan Doyle; Judy Blume, E.L.Konigsburg and J.K. Rowling. A partial list in the appendix accounts for at least 164 works.

Brozina, an experienced elementary school librarian, selected each title, and often re-told them in his popular classes.

Besides transferring his love to Alice through words and intimate time, The Streak was alchemy; it provided comfort and tolerance to each during a pile-up of family losses: the deaths of two grandparents, the abandonment-divorce of a wife/mother, the constant collegiate separations from an older daughter/sister; plus, agonizing financial struggles and occasional single dad/opposite sex child conflicts.

After 3,218 uninterrupted evenings, The Streak terminated on September 2, 2006—Alice’s first day of college. Since then she has graduated and founded a website called makeareadingpromise.com.

Brozina, meanwhile, was marginalized at his job when the school’s principals decided that reading was really irrelevant to a kid’s development. And, despite his appeal to higher level officials in the school district, Brozina was thwarted. His beloved library was cleaned of its purpose, his book collection, and–charm.

As of now, Brozina plans to run for a position on the school board.

This is a magnificent work for the matrix of librarians, teachers, readers-to-be, and readers—everywhere.

It is: compassionate and unforgettable.

This review by David Bruce Smith first appeared in The Chestertown Spy.
http://www.chestertownspy.com/book-review-the-reading-promise-by-alice-ozma/ show less

I didn't enjoy this as much as I thought I would. I love the premise: a single father and his young daughter make a promise that he will read to her for 100 consecutive nights. I read aloud to my girls, usually at the dinner table, almost every night. It is our favorite thing to do together, though we have not gone so far as to sign a contract. When Ozma and her dad reach this milestone, they extend it to 1000 nights and beyond. The Streak, as they call it, lasts until he takes her to college. They had to get creative about reading before midnight every night -- he comes to take her out of a community theatre rehearsal to read to her in the car before midnight, they have to plan ahead for prom, etc. The book, however, was less about the show more reading they shared, or even the bonds they forged, and was really a collection of stories from her childhood, usually highlighting how precious and precocious she was/is. The author, Alice Ozma (named by her father in honor of two beloved book characters) is only 22. She clearly has a bright future, and has been shaped by this commitment with her father, but her youth and her immaturity come through in her writing, and I found myself thinking this should have been a blog instead of a book, or a beloved collection of stories shared with the family.

I ended up whipping through this book so that I could be done with it. Why this is my modus operandi when I am not liking a book rather than just setting it aside I’m not sure. The only chapter that completely caught my attention was toward the end, when Ozma describes her father’s decision to retire long before he’s ready because of the unhappy changes made to his library and his role as school librarian. I am very familiar with this issue, of course, as I am currently pursuing a school library masters degree. School libraries are places where students learn to find and use information; where they learn to be responsible digital citizens, and where they have access to and learn to love books. The transformation of the school library has not been altogether smooth, and some schools have had a harder time than others finding, or even seeking a balance. In the library of Ms. Ozma’s father, he was first restricted to reading aloud only 5-10 minutes per class, then his collection was placed in storage, and books re-ordered by the principal, including hundreds the library already owned. Then his homey, inviting décor was removed, and finally, the library was emptied of books. Appeals to the principal, higher-ups, the superintendent and the school board failed to restore any part of his program, even with mountains of research supporting books and reading and reading aloud. The message was clear: reading is irrelevant. At the close of the book, he was running for the school board, and good luck to him. show less

This is a good book--but not the one I was expecting. Alice Ozma and her librarian father started a tradition of him reading to her every night. At first they agreed to do it for one hundred nights--but then decided to keep going and made it past one thousand into a streak that lasted until she went to college.

What I was expecting was a book about books--and a discussion of what books he read. What the book turned out to be was a sweet memoir about being raised by a single Dad who happens to be an extraordinary librarian and an interesting character. The book is about how the act of reading brought them closer.

I was expecting this to be a memoir of reading where it really was more a memoir of childhood with a father who read to the author a lot. It was good as the latter, but I never quite got over my disappointment that it wasn't the former. What was important, mostly, seemed to be that Ozma's father read to her and that they shared their love of stories (and, hey, super important message about the power of reading to children there, sure), but I was constantly itching for more about what they were reading and how the stories themselves affected their lives. Highly readable and enjoyable, but missed the mark a bit.

When I first started reading Alice Ozma’s The Reading Promise, I was disappointed. The book didn’t live up to my expectation that she “ooh” and “ahh” over her favorite books, that she discuss her ideas and feelings about certain books, or that she describe in lush atmospheric detail how her favorite reads affected her. She was just talking about stuff that happened in her daily pre-teen life with her dad and sometimes her sister. Oh, the reading was there everyday as promised, but books didn’t seem to be the central character. This was not what I was hoping for.

But somewhere around chapter 6 or 7, I saw that Alice was trying to accomplish something besides fawning over her favorite books. It clicked for me that regardless show more of what was going on in their lives and in their home—her older sister heading abroad to study for a year, a mother overdosing on pills, her high school prom—her father kept his commitment to read to her every night with no slips, no dips, and no day’s off, even when he was sick.

As much as I love books and being read to, I believe there’s something more important being shown in this book: the power of commitment and how to carry it out. Yes, books do change lives. But what a different place the world would be if parents had Jim Brozina’s level of commitment and consistency. This is a wonderful book about the relationship between a father and his daughter. I would say that any woman who’s looking for an example of what a healthy and loving relationship with a dependable dad looks like, need look no further than this book. I hope Alice Ozma realizes just how blessed she is.

Highly recommended. show less