Podcast

Reach Out and Read is On the Air

Engaging conversations with experts in childhood health and literacy.

An award-winning podcast centered on the belief that children’s books build better brains, better family relationships, and happier, healthier children and societies. Join us as host Dr. Dipesh Navsaria, a pediatrician with a children’s librarianship degree dives into a wealth of varied early childhood health and literacy topics with expert guests examining the many facets of supporting the parent-child relationship as key to early success.

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Latest Episode

“Stories of Gratitude” | November 27, 2025

Reading aloud brings people together, and we thank every person who reads aloud to a child. To mark this holiday devoted to giving thanks, we asked three children’s authors — Traci Sorell, Ann Clare LeZotte, and Dr. Sayantani DasGupta — to read aloud their own stories of gratitude. Click here for complete show transcripts. This episode originally aired in 2020.

  • Traci Sorell 

    Cherokee Nation citizen and award-winning author Traci Sorell writes fiction and nonfiction books, short stories and poems for young people. A former federal Indian law attorney and advocate, she lives with her family within her tribe’s reservation in northeastern Oklahoma.

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  • Ann Clare LeZotte

    Ann Clare LeZotte is the author of “Show Me a Sign” (a 2020 School Library Journal Book of the Year, four starred reviews) and a forthcoming companion novel. A long-time youth services librarian who focused on underserved populations and inclusion, Ann is deaf, bilingual, and bicultural. “I never had a romance about being ‘special’ or ‘different,’” she says. “I wished long and hard to be normal, a waste of time and a heartbreak I don’t want other young people to experience.” 

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  • Dr. Sayantani DasGupta

    Dr. Sayantani DasGupta is the New York Times bestselling author of the critically acclaimed, Bengali folktale and string theory-inspired “Kiranmala and the Kingdom Beyond” books, the first of which — ”The Serpent’s Secret” — was a Bank Street Best Book of the Year, a Booklist Best Middle Grade Novel of the 21st Century, and an EB White Read Aloud Honor Book. Dr. DasGupta is a pediatrician by training but now teaches at Columbia University.

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Research shows reading physical books together brings the strongest benefits to children. That’s why we’re happy to have Boise Paper – a responsible paper manufacturer – as founding sponsor of this podcast. Through their Paper with Purpose promise, Boise Paper looks for ways to make a difference in local communities. Thank you to Boise Paper for investing in our Reach Out and Read community.

Award Winning
Two-time winner of an Anthem Award in the Health category.
> Complete list of winners
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Meet the Host

To the best of our knowledge, there is only one pediatrician anywhere who got a master’s in library science in the middle of his medical training, all to learn more about children’s literature. That is our host, Dr. Dipesh Navsaria. A practicing pediatrician in Wisconsin, Dr. Navsaria is the Medical Director of Reach Out and Read Wisconsin, Chair of the Early Literacy Subcommittee of the American Academy of Pediatrics’ Council on Early Childhood, and many other initiatives involving the psychosocial world of children, their families, and society, from policy to parenting support. A professor of pediatrics and of human development and family studies at the University of Wisconsin – Madison, he lives in Madison, Wisconsin, with his wife, two children, two cats, a dog, and backyard chickens. He has a deep-seated dependence on wearing bowties, of which he owns far too many…but all of which he can tie without a mirror, in under a minute!

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Meet the host of the ROR Podcast