Topic 3

1) Blogging can help me in a school environment by letting me share my work with others and allowing me to see their thoughts, opinions, and own personal questions in return. I can keep in touch with the school community virtually anywhere so long as I have access to a computer, and can ask or give help through posts and comments, respectively.

2) The book I'm reading for my book trailer is called Virals and is written Kathy Reichs, better known for her Bones series featuring Temperance Brennan (yes, it's the basis of the TV show). Two characters in this book are the protagonist Tory Brennan and her pet wolf-dog Cooper. A bit of a tomboy, Tory is described in the book as having flaming red hair, emerald eyes and pale skin. Something of a tomboy, she's determined, intelligent, headstrong and sometimes reckless. She has some lingering issues over the death of her mother a year previous to the events in the book; she was killed by a drunk driver in Massachusetts. Cooper is Tory's pet wolf-dog, the pup of a German shepard and a wolf. He's described as looking more wolf-like, but with distinct dog characteristics. He's extremely loyal and protective of Tory. I would definitely be friends with animal-lower Tory the science geek and her awesome pet wolf-dog if they were to come to Poway High.

3) The setting of the book is an island off the coast of South Carolina. Called Loggerhead Island, it houses a remote research facility for the University of Charleston that studies animal life. Tory and her friends live in the nearby town of Charleston, a real place, in what we can assume is the present day. Modern technology like iPhones and apps and often mentioned, and the Vietnam War (said to have taken place "way back" in the sixties) is a key point in the story line. One very exciting scene in the book is towards the beginning, where Tory and her friends are breaking into part of the research facility and discover one of the scientists is conducting illegal experiments on rabies--with Cooper as the guinea pig! A very suspenseful few pages follow where they have to get the wolf-dog pup out of the facility and back to Charleston without setting off any alarms or being discovered by the security guards. They fail at the first--but you'll have to read the book if you want to figure out the latter!