I still remember sitting on the couch in the den with my maternal grandfather listening to the Mets game on the radio before cable TV came to our neighborhood. He and my grandmother lived just one block away from us. He was originally a Brooklyn Dodgers fan and my paternal grandfather, who died years before I was born, was a New York Giants fan, but both of them became Mets fans once “their” teams deserted New York for the West Coast. As a result, my father was a Mets fan too, and thus logically followed that the first-born son would be instilled with the same team loyalty. It is this fandom that I have tried to pass on to both my son and my daughter since pretty much the day they were born. And it is this bond around sports and other shared experiences that motivated me to start Read Together Books.

My first childhood Mets game at Shea Stadium is something I will never forget, and I consider myself very fortunate to have made countless trips to Shea since then with my Dad. Just before they played their last game ever at Shea, I brought Nate to his first Mets game and my Dad joined us as well. It was such a special day for me to be there with both my son and my Dad. There is something about sports that brings families together. It is this love for each other, the love of “our” team, and the bond that is formed rooting for “our” team that makes sports great.

Rewind to just over a year prior to that final trip to Shea. I was in Chestnut Hill for my Boston College reunion. From about three months on, every night my wife insisted that I read a book to our previously mentioned newborn before I put him in his crib. Not to sound like a bad father, but I couldn’t understand why I was wasting time reading a book to a newborn (heck, how was a Neanderthal like me to know their vocabulary forms at such a young age?). Needless to say, I was a bit frustrated with the repetitive task of reading about the same brown bears and pink pigs playing at parties every night. It surely put me to sleep even if Nate was still wide awake.

So, there I was at the BC bookstore looking to buy a BC book for our first child. Fortunately, as it turns out, there were no books that fit that description and so the labor of love that was My Daddy Loves Boston College Football and still is Read Together Books began.

A note of thanks…

There are so many people to who I owe a debt of gratitude for helping me get Read Together Books off the ground. Friends and family alike have endured countless emails and phone calls requesting their feedback on one thing or another. A heartfelt thank you to all of you who share in the company’s success.

The Read Together Books logo would not exist without the magic touch of the talented Marc Munz of marc munz design who took my crayon scribblings and transformed them into our great logo. In addition, Marc has designed all of the flyers and marketing materials for the company and continues to provide great graphic design work to aid in the promotion of the book.

Lastly, I am grateful to each of you who has purchased one of our books and read it to your child or with your child so many times that they know your college fight song by heart or continue to enlighten you with amazing facts about animals.  Mike

Oh yeah, and I am grateful to the two blessings in my life, Nate and Emma, who are the “together” in Read Together Books and were more than eager (at the time) to sing For Boston, but now will likely do anything to get this video taken down.