Ciao! My name is Sloan Catherine Winters. I'm 16 years old, I play soccer and golf, as well as participate in Lifesavers, Freshman Mentors, Key Club, and Student Council. When I grow up I want to be a Pediatrician. I have one brother, Luke, and he is 13 years old. This summer I traveled to Europe including Italy and I miss Italy very much, it was amazing. I hope I get to there again sometime in my life. I don't seem to have much time to read on my own too often, but when I do, I enjoy it. I like books on topics that have a historic background such as the Salem Witch Trials, the Holocaust, and Yellow Fever. On top of that, as any teenage girl would enjoy, I love reading sappy love stories. My favorite book is
The Last Lecture by Randy Pausch which is a true story about a man who is dying of cancer and he writes this book as a guide to how he lived his life to the fullest, and it is dedicated to his wife and children that he ended up leaving behind. My mom is quite the avid reader, and I hope that I become more like her in that aspect as I get older.
Enough about me though, this year in English I'm excited about the Read for a Lifetime program blogging assignment. In the past two years of high school, I've wanted to get involved with the program but never really had the motivation to continue reading the books. Now that it is an assignment, I know I will finish it happily. I often have a problem finding books on my own that I would enjoy so now that there is a list to choose from, I think that will help a lot. I love that the list is a mix of old classic novels, true stories, and teen fiction. For the first quarter I chose the book
Three Black Swans by Caroline B. Cooney. This book is a fiction book about two best friends who happen to be cousins in the beginning of the story that put on a hoax in one of the girl's school claiming they are long lost identical twins that were seperated at that just discovered each other. Turns out, the hoax ends up being on them when they discover they truly are twins, all these years, no wonder they had that sort of connection. To put even more of a twist on the situation, they have a third sister-triplets-that lives only 20 miles away. I chose this book because I think that if something like that happened to anyone, it would be quite tramatic and life changing. Also, I've always wanted a sister and having a twin would be so interesting. I have twin boy cousins that I love to death, they are the funniest, sweetest things ever. So my whole life, I've been captivated by the idea of twins. They are built in best friends. I even have always secretly hoped to have twin boys of my own someday.
Having blogs in relation to your feelings on a book is always a good way to analyze the book. As for this class, I'm not exactly creative, so I don't think my suggestions will be that helpful. But, I think one good blog prompt would be something along the lines of what the book reminds you of personally so far. Has something ever happened to you that something in the book reminded you of? Of course there is always the "Be honest, what do you think of the book so far?" question that always seems to pop up one way or another. Another question could be if I would suggest this book to someone else, and if so, what age group or what kind of person would enjoy this book. Another question could be something like, if something like this happened to you in real life, how would you handle it? A prompt could also go something like picking apart the book more technically--rising action, climax, falling action, protagonist, antagonist ect..
