West Florida Regional Library

Col. Kenneth Echternacht Jr.- 1:22 pm

Teen Author Donates Books to 100 Libraries to Celebrate 5th ...

St. Petersburg, FL (PRWEB) July 2, 2004

To help celebrate the five year anniversary of the historic Women’s World Cup victory on July 10th, local teen author, Leah Lauber, is donating 100 copies of her book, Soccer Dreams, to libraries nationwide. Lauber will also be donating an additional 150 copies to local literacy groups to be determined to bring the total retail value of her donation to nearly $ 5,000.00.

Soccer Dreams describes Leah’s true adventure following the U.S. Women’s National Soccer Team, as a fan and 12-year-old Junior Reporter for the St. Petersburg Times during the history-making 1999 Women’s World Cup.

Leah, today a 17-year-old high school senior, wrote the 92-page book five years ago and it is illustrated with more than 200 color photos, most taken by her father, Chris, initially intended for the family photo album. Leah’s family self-published Soccer Dreams after the family had difficulty generating interest from established publishers.

“I wrote Soccer Dreams for several reasons,” said Leah. “I wanted to share my adventure with other fans, promote the positive values I learned from the team members, and encourage readers to dream big. Donating these books to libraries will help me achieve my goals, while making the book more readily available to anyone near the chosen libraries.”

The Women’s World Cup is widely regarded as a significant milestone, with the largest crowd ever for a women’s sports event assembled at the Rose Bowl in Pasadena, California to watch the U.S. squad defeat China in dramatic fashion.

After 120 minutes under the scorching sun resulted in a scoreless tie, more than 90,000 spectators and 40 million television viewers witnessed the victory by the slimmest of margins – the infamous penalty kick by Brandi Chastain, followed by the memorable moment of Chastain ripping off her jersey in “a moment of temporary insanity,” as she later called it.

Winning the 1999 Women’s World Cup was recently recognized by ESPN as one the “Top 20 Sports Stories” during the last 25 years, as voted by a panel of 100 journalists.

While many of the libraries chosen are in Lauber’s home state of Florida, 62 of the libraries are being sent by priority mail to libraries coast-to-coast in 17 other states. A complete list is included below.

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