TWILIGHT
Bibliography:
Meyer, Stephenie. (2005). Twilight. New York: Little, Brown.
Summary:
Bella relocates to Forks, Washington to spend her remaining high school years with her dad while her mom travels with her new baseball-player husband. With new surroundings comes traversing high school as the “new girl.” Soon after her arrival, her attention is drawn to Edward Cullen, “son” of a popular physician in town. Unbeknownst to her, he is drawn to her as well. Through suspicion, conversation with her old friend Jacob, and research of her own, Bella learns the truth behind the Cullens, the fact that they are vampires. This particular vampire family that she becomes close to, and even closer to Edward, choose to go against traditional behavior and feed only on animal blood, assuring Bella her safety. The difficulty is the unique characteristic of Bella’s blood…one which is highly attractive to vampires in general. This detail lands Bella in serious trouble as a band of vampires “smells” her and chooses to make her their meal. It is then that the Cullens protect this human as one of their own, sealing Bella’s fate as a member of their own unique family.
Impressions:
Somehow I managed to avoid the Twilight phenomenon up until now. I tend to stay away from the books that get all the attention because I tend to be disappointed. I was never interested in this in particular because I didn’t like the casting and hype but once I committed to reading the book, I have to say I was truly pleasantly surprised. Meyer created a unique perspective on the vampire genre and it led to a remarkable following. The characters were believable and even likeable. The emphasis on humanizing the inhuman and traversing high school anxiety in the process brings with it an all too familiar feeling of high school drama that always exists.
Reviews:
When seventeen-year-old Bella Swan moves in with her dad in the small town of Forks, Washington, she's immediately Fascinated by one of her new classmates, the distant but exquisitely handsome Edward Cullen. Though Edward is obviously drawn towards Bella as well, he is clearly conflicted, warning her away from him, and she eventually guesses why: he's a vampire. Like the rest of his unusual enclave, he has forsworn feeding on humans, but Bella tempts his appetite as well as completely capturing his heart. A trusting Bella has confidence in Edward's increasing self-control, but it's not Edward she has to worry about when a group of visiting vampires encounters her among Edward's family and fixes on her as their prey. The story moves slowly, spending an excessive amount of time on extended description and contemplation of Edward's physical beauty ("He was too perfect. . . . There was no way this godlike creature could be meant for me") and a general tendency to tell at length rather than show; it's not until the last quarter that the vampire hunt delivers the suspense and action promised in the opening scene. The notion of the vampire struggling with self-abnegation is a philosophically intriguing one, though, and Meyer makes original use of the classic subtext in her conflation of Edward's different kinds of appetites. The matter-of-factness of Bella's narration makes her seem an accessibly ordinary teen even as her calm acceptance of her boyfriend's vampirism supports the notion that she is highly unusual in ways that arouse Edward's affections, not just his hunger. While this lacks the pace that some vampire lovers seek, readers may nonetheless find their appetites whetted by the risky, compelling romance.
Stevenson, D. (2005). Twilight. Bulletin of the Center for Children's Books, 59(4), 195.
Stephenie Meyer's Twilight takes place mostly in the small town of Forks on the Olympic Peninsula of northwest Washington. Because the sun shines less often in Forks than in any other community in the United States, an old, affluent, and accomplished family of vampires has settled in the area. Isabella (Bella) Swan's parents have been divorced since she was an infant, but she has regularly visited her single father who is the town's police chief, and now she is moving to Forks from Phoenix, Arizona, to start her junior year of high school. She has chosen to do this so that her mother will be free to accompany her new partner, a professional baseball player, on his travels. Bella finds a new kind of popularity based largely on the fact that Edward Cullen-the most beautiful boy in school and one of the vampires-falls madly in love with her.
Twilight appeals to young women so much that I had to write this review from a library copy with a broken back and loose pages because my copy is still circulating among the female students in my YA literature class. The book is the ultimate romance. Back in the early 1980s when our most influential publishers began promoting teen romances, I did an ALAN presentation entitled, "The Jocks in Girls' Fiction: Characters without Support." Now, twenty-five years later, when I found myself staying up all night reading Meyer's Twilight, my old discomfort came flooding back. I'm bothered when authors of romances use words to "perfect" the attitudes and the actions of males much like the creators of pornography use makeup, airbrushes, and now computer graphics to "perfect" the bodies of females.
There is no way that a typical high school boy can compete with Edward Cullen, who is gorgeous beyond belief and who is so swift and strong that he can stop a car that is sliding toward Bella in the iced-over school parking lot. He is so prescient that he is on hand to rescue Bella when she finds herself alone and being threatened in a bad part of a nearby town where she had gone with friends to shop for a prom dress. No matter what Bella does, Edward remains steadfastly in love with her. And even though he was attracted to her because his extrasensitive nose can detect her "special" scent, their "love" is more romantic than sexual because Edward explains that he is so strong that if they had sex he might lose control and accidentally crush her or forget and bite her, thereby turning her into a vampire.
When I mentioned to one enchanted reader that I didn't like the way the book glorified sex and then skirted the real issue that most girls face, she gushed, "But that's why it's such a perfect plot!" Another reader who "loved the book" was so put off by my motherly worries that she assured me, "I know I'm not in school with vampires!" That's true, but still I would like to attach a warning label: "Read and enjoy-but please do not think you are a failure if your boyfriend is not as wonderful as Edward Cullen."
Alleen, P. N. (2006). Twilight. English Journal, 96(1), 94-95.
Uses:
Because of the overwhelming popularity of the Twilight series, I would use this book as a display item to promote similarly-themed literature that may not be receiving the same attention but will also keep students reading. I’d likely use a sign that said something like, “If you liked Twilight by Stephenie Meyer, take a look at these!” Hopefully it may entice others to take a look at some books that may have been lost in the stacks until now.
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