Tween reads...

Wow. The "Twilight series"... I had to write about these books after about the tenth time I heard somebody with a daughter say that their daughter loved these books. Which is fine, they're light, easy reads with little depth of character. Very predictable but still fun. Definitely directed toward people under 18...BUT THESE ARE ELEVEN AND TWELVE YEAR OLDS THAT ARE "IN LOVE WITH EDWARD!"

Yuck!! Eeeeew! And no, I'm not saying "eew" because he's a vampire. It's a work of fiction, for pete's sake, vampires are interesting. I'm saying "eew" because he's creepy and controlling! Here is a boy...man...a hundred year old teenage boy, let's say, who (unbeknownst to the girl, Bella, until well into the stories) creeps into her window every night to watch her sleep! This is completely uninvited and before they were "dating." Then he admits it later and does Bella see the GIANT RED FLAG that such behavior should drop right in front of her face? No.

Instead this author goes on to justify and glamorize the fact that a boy is sneaking in the window of a young woman night after night...it's because he loooooves her, he's protecting her, BLAH BLAH BLAH. He actually breaks her truck at one point and sets his vampire sister on Bella to keep her away from another male friend (werewolf, no less) and Bella, while admittedly she is irritated about it, allows this kind of controlling behavior to continue while in her head she's still thinking how she doesn't deserve Edward's love or protection. She has to sneak off with her werewolf friend at one point, he rides a motorcycle up to her school and snatches her out of the parking lot.

Bella herself -- she's completely lacking any self-esteem or sense of her worth. Supposedly others see it in her and she can tell they notice her when she moves to Forks...but throughout the four books, she is self-deprecating to an annoying level. She's constantly thinking about how Edward is so perfect and beautiful and she could never ever "deserve" him. Now, to be fair, the author does allow Edward to tell Bell how beautiful she is, and how desirable to him, but it's all mixed up with his vampire-ness, in the sense that the only compliment he pays her that she believes at all is that she smells delicious to him and it's hard for him to resist killing her because of it.

Bella doesn't accept gifts well, nor compliments, we're constantly given the impression that she just feels like a plain, boring, undeserving nothing of a girl. I want my daughters to see this person as the heroine of the story?!