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A Conversation with Alice Ozma and Robert Strauss

Presented by Free Library of Philadelphia - Parkway Central Library at Free Library of Philadelphia - Parkway Central Library

July 19, 2011

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Alice Ozma’s touching debut memoir The Reading Promise: My Father and the Books We Shared tells the story of her single father, an elementary school librarian, who read aloud to her every night, starting from when she was in fourth grade until the day she left for college, and the life lessons learned from the books he read to her. Reading with her father offered a comforting continuity, as they progressed from L. Frank Baum’s Oz stories to Shakespeare, for 3,218 nights. With its fantastic reading list and illustration of the parent-child bond, The Reading Promise is a powerful argument for the importance of libraries to children and the benefits of reading aloud to them. Professional sports writer and University of Pennsylvania English professor Robert Strauss provides his perspective of life on the sidelines in Daddy’s Little Goalie: A Father, His Daughters, & Sports. Millions of girls succeeding on fields, courts, tracks, and pools have gathered quite a following, and among their most avid fans: their fathers. From the pride inspired by a daughter's first left-handed layup to shin-kicking action on the soccer field, the book offers humorous anecdotes about the father-daughter sporting dynamic based on his experiences rooting for his daughters, Ella and Sylvia.