Confession

Besides the school year being in full swing, there is another reason why I have been so inconsistent in writing lately. I'm not proud of this, but I must confess a new addiction: the Twilight series. For over a year now, the girls that I teach have been magnetized to these books, reading them during every free moment, animatedly talking about them, and begging me to read them. I resisted because they were described to me as "A story about a girl who falls in love with a vampire." Now, I'm not really into vampires or anything else that sucks your blood, not to mention a story that teenage girls drool over. However, after a year of resistance, I finally gave into reading the series in order to at least be able to converse with the girls I teach.

Let's just say that I devoured the first book (500 pages) in four days and borrowed the second from one of my students today.

I must admit that it is aimed at teenage girls, but it is also a New York Times Bestseller, is extremely well-written, and reads a lot like Harry Potter with well crafted suspense and characters. It's easy to read, leaves you with just enough questions to turn the pages at lightning speed, and includes clean romance, which is nice for a change in the teenage girl book world. Of course, the romance has to be clean if the girl is in love with a vampire; if he goes too far, he'll suck her blood!

One thing I really like about this series is the variety of girls that are drawn to it. Unlike some books, they aren't written with unattainably perfect characters or the "popular girl" audience in mind. The protagonist is an average, flawed, unassuming girl, which makes her very accessible and attractive, and because of that, the reading audience is void of any social status.

While the books are surprisingly convincing, I defer to the wisdom of Bart Simpson: "Vampires are make-believe, like elves, gremlins, and eskimos."