Journey of a budding writer

I can't really remember the first time I fell in love with reading. I had always been a bookworm. Perhaps the event that accelerated my love of reading was the introduction of, "The Accelerated Reading Program." Sounds cheesy, I know. Basically what this program did was, for every book you read, you would be tested on it, and awarded points for getting over seven of the ten questions correct. The more answers you got correct, the more you got; the harder the books, even more points. I took it upon myself to read as many fourth and fifth grade books as humanly possible for a new second grader. I couldn't stop reading. The program not only gave you the possibility of getting points, but it would open up a store where you could use your points to buy useless toys that only a second grader would love. Just like good old America to instill a sense of consumerism by prostituting a child's love of reading.

I guess this love of reading stemmed from my mother and father. My mother was never around. I was always home alone. Living on an army base in the provided quarters got pretty boring. So I took to the written word as my escape from the boring white walls and desolate rooms. In the pages of a book, I could listen to Sadako Sasaki's wish as she struggled to make 1000 paper cranes. This was my favorite book. The story was about a little Japanese girl that had been diagnosed with leukemia. Japanese legend had it that if she were to make 1000 paper cranes she could fulfill her wish to be cured. Unfortunately, she never got to make them all. A year after I read this story, I found out it was based on a real girl named Sadako. There was a special on Nickelodeon about an elementary school that made the rest of the cranes for Sadako in honor of her memory.

My father's contribution to my love of reading was probably because he rarely read to me at all. When I wasn't at my mother's house, I was with my father. He would take me to work with him during the day. To insure that I wouldn't p