Nets forward Jeff Green and his wife, Stephanie, have evening story time with their young daughters every night, even if it has to be via FaceTime when he’s on the road with the team. That won’t be any different this Mother’s Day.
What will be different this time is Stephanie won’t just be the narrator, she’ll be the author. And this time their daughters will be the stars of their own stories.
Stephanie wrote a children’s book titled “Dream, Little Girl, Dream” essentially as a love letter to their daughters, and it was just published in time for Mother’s Day.
“Me and my wife made it a priority to read to our daughters before they went to bed each night,” Green told The Post. “My wife came up with that idea of creating a book as a memory for our daughters, being a story about them, and a story about little kids having a dream [and that they] do great things.
“She came up with the idea to create a book that would create a memory for our daughters that we can read to them so they can understand as they get older. She came up with that, and she made it come true.”
Sunday’s virtual storytime — with Green and his Nets in Chicago preparing to face the Bulls — can feature Stephanie’s book, which began selling Monday on Amazon and Vervante. Having it available by Mother’s Day was key to Stephanie, who envisions reading with children as vital bonding time. It certainly has been for the Greens with daughters Sofia and Jasmine.
“I’ve always been a reader myself. I read pretty much almost every day, and the girls have a good collection of books. We read every single time; it’s part of the routine,” Stephanie told The Post. “I’m like, you know what, why not have something for the girls that they enjoy so much, and do something for them and when they grow up and have it for the kids’ kids? It’d be a great and special thing.”
And if “Dream, Little Girl, Dream” is a special thing, Mother’s Day is a special time to share it.
“An average parent, they have limited time with kids between jobs, daily pickups and just daily activities in life: cooking, cleaning,” Stephanie said. “I just wanted to make sure that everybody could share this story, having a nighttime story. For us, we’d read to our girls every night. So they get so much into characters or storytelling — they ask questions and just retain so much.
“This is our time to just read with the girls with no distractions, no phones, and we just soak it all up. It’s so important personally for my family and my husband we all just come together to read that I’m [thinking] Mother’s Day could be such a great thing to end at night with this book, and for the kids to read it and just let their imaginations run.”
Which is essentially the point of the book.
In it, the Green sisters — yes, they’re named Sofia and Jasmine, and bear an uncanny resemblance to the author’s daughters — get tucked into bed with a kiss on the forehead from their parents. But instead of a dreamless sleep, they hop out of bed and onto a magical adventure — imagining their own futures as everything from world-class athletes to life-saving doctors.
Befitting considering their father is a 12-year NBA veteran and a key leader on a Nets team aiming for a league title. But the elder Green sister Sofia is more into ballet than basketball. The younger sibling Jasmine prefers to be a doctor, thanks to a love of Doc McStuffins. Though having just turned 3, she has a little bit of a wait.
Still, the entire message is that anything is possible. In many ways, Green — still dunking his way through the NBA at 34, despite having undergone open heart surgery — is living proof of that.
“It’s all about that time that you spend, that intimate time you get with your kids to tell them a story, to give them imagination, give them hope — especially about the book — that anything they put their mind to is possible,” he said. “That’s a big part of motherhood and the connection to kids — daughters in our case. We thought it was necessary to put that story out, our way. I think my wife did a great job at it.”
This post first appeared on Nypost.com
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