Twilight

Twilight

By Stephenie Meyer

Little, Brown and Co., 2005. 498 pages. Paranormal romance.

ISBN: 9780316160179

Reading/Interest Level: Ages 13+

Curriculum ties: Relationships, fitting in

Booktalk Ideas: Moving in!: Talk about why Bella moved and how she’s felt while adjusting to her new school via journal entries. Hint at the romance, but don’t go into details.

Challenge Issues: Violence

Challenge Response: First Defense File

Reader’s Annotation:

When Bella Swan moves to Forks, Washington from sunny Arizona she has more to adjust to than just the weather. Vampires are hot and they’re more than just a myth in Forks.

Plot Summary:

When Bella Swan’s mom gets remarried, Bella feels slightly awkward and wants to give her mom some time alone with her new husband. So, she moves from sunny Arizona to rainy Forks, Washington to live with her dad.

As the new girl in school, Bell isn’t sure how she’ll fit in. She quickly makes some new friends, but her new lab partner, the mysterious Edward Cullen, seems to hate her without ever even speaking to her.

It turns out the entire Cullen family is a little out of the ordinary. When Bella tries to figure out their mystery, all the evidence points to vampires, but vampires aren’t real… are they? Once she knows the truth, Edward’s stiffness starts to disappear and is replaced with more tender feelings, but still, loving a vampire certainly brings with it a whole host of other problems. For example, will Edward be able to resist his desire to drink Bella’s blood?

Critical Evaluation:

While Meyer’s creates likeable (though shallow) characters, the writing itself at times goes a little overboard with excessive descriptions. For example, when Bella first sees Edward in the sunlight, it says, “his shirt open over his sculpted, incandescent chest, his scintillating arms bare.” Even when I was caught up in the emotion of the book, that sentence pulled me out of the story. The purple prose could really be toned down while still retaining the integrity of the story.

As for the characters, they were likable and relatable on some level (more so the human ones). However, the character actions and motivations were clearly meant only to progress the story of Bella and Edward, almost at the sacrifice of their own identity. That is especially true of Bella’s human friends who only seemed to exist to contrast with the vampire characters.

The vampire characters, though they all have their own unique backstories (which are explained more in later books), are almost solely focused on Bella without having clear lives of their own. Alice is a girly girl and exists to be the best vampire friend. Carlisle and Esme are the loving parents, and even though Carlisle is a Doctor and clearly has a job, whenever Bella is in need of medical attention he’s right there.

All that being said, at its core this is a teen romance full of sexual tension and feelings of alienation, which all teens deal with. Perhaps that is why it is so popular. Many girls love the idea of finding the perfect guy who is kind, caring, rich, smart, and extremely attractive. Which is basically how Meyer portrays Edward Cullen. Many girls also see themselves as the average girl, and thus can relate to Bella, who is average but somehow attracts the attention of the amazing Edward Cullen. Girls can thus vicariously live their fantasy romance by reading about it, even if the book isn’t technically great writing.

About the Author:

Stephenie Meyer graduated from Brigham Young University with a bachelor's degree in English. She lives with her husband and three young sons in Phoenix, Arizona.

Stephenie Meyer's life changed dramatically on June 2, 2003. The stay-at-home mother of three young sons woke up from a dream featuring seemingly real characters that she could not get out of her head.
“Though I had a million things to do, I stayed in bed, thinking about the dream. Unwillingly, I eventually got up and did the immediate necessities, and then put everything that I possibly could on the back burner and sat down at the computer to write—something I hadn't done in so long that I wondered why I was bothering.” That’s when she started her debut novel, Twilight, the first of a four book series. Before the final Twilight book was published, Stephenie also produced The Host, her first science fiction novel for adults.
-from author’s website-

Justification of Selection:

This book is emotionally engaging, romantic, and a pretty clean read showing that young relationships don’t have to involve physical intimacy. This was one of Publishers Weekly’s “Best Children’s Book of 2005”, and one of School Library Journal’s “Best Books of 2005.”