Ron Padgett, the author of Creative Reading, remembers how he learned to read and write as if these things happened yesterday. Like Padgett, I tried to remember my history of reading and writing. When my parents read to me, they enjoyed reading Dr. Suess' books, which became popular with the publication of The Cat in the Hat. I was only interested in looking at color books. When the books were colorful, they quickly caught my attention. I couldn't wait for my parents to come into my room at night and read me The Cat in the Hat. I think this is one of the popular books that parents should read to their children. Every time my parents read to me, I tried to say those words with them. As a result, whenever I had trouble pronouncing a word, my mother made me pronounce the word until I pronounced it correctly. He told me to take every word, syllable by syllable. As I grew up, I loved reading The Baby-Sitters Club series. Every time I bought a Baby-Sitters Club book, in the back there was a section where a girl could sign up to be part of what was known as The Baby-Sitters Club. All a girl had to do was fill out the back of the book and send it to a postal address. It took about three weeks for a package to arrive at my house. It was fun to be a part of the club because every month I received three different books, bumper stickers, buttons, pencils, mirrors, and other things that I thought were cool. They were the only books that existed in my life. I enjoyed reading the series and wondering what the next story would be about. Also, in elementary school, there was a "Book It" program, which was a reading program to encourage children to read more often. We received special buttons that... in the center of the card... dealt with boring things that happened in the past. My school did this to try to prepare students for the SATs. By junior year, when it came time to take the SATs, I hated it. After always being forced to read books that weren't exciting, I never found myself reading simply for pleasure. When I was younger, I was interested in reading. I loved reading in my spare time and would check out different books from the library at least once a week. As I get older, I read a lot less, and reading is more irritating. I hate reading and sometimes it annoys me when I have homework to read in class. Over the years there have been readings that I was forced to read that I didn't like. For the most part it stopped me from reading. I know that reading is something important, but I also know that it's something I hate doing most of the time.