Teen Stuff

Twilight series author Stephanie Meyer has posted the first chapter of the story from Edward's point of view (instead of Bella's). She hopes to someday publish the novel Midnight Sun, which will tell his story in its entirety.

Meanwhile, she is hard at work on the fourth in the series, Breaking Dawn, which is tentatively scheduled to be published Fall, 2008.

Also, just FYI in Twilight movie news, a publicized open casting call went out January 18th for the actor who will play Jacob Black.

FYI: A movie based on the Cirque de Freak series by Darren Shan is coming out at the end of February, 2008.

Having noticed how popular the series by Stephenie Meyer--beginning with Twilight--has become, I took home the book last week. Sometimes when something is really popular with a lot of people, I get this sort of rebellious attitude about liking it...and when I first started reading Twilight, I thought, "What's the big deal about this book?"

I had read three chapters and set it aside for a few days, and then yesterday picked it up....and ended up not being able to put it down for 4-5 hours until I finished it!

Twilight tells the story of Bella, who moves to a small town in Washington state, and meets a very unusual boy, Edward Cullen. While you know, from the book's jacket and hype that Edward is a vampire, the book is still really suspenseful as you wait for her to find out....and see how this will affect her.

One of the great strengths of this novel is the author's ability to heighten the romantic tension throughout the book...while still maintaining an innocence true to Bella's age and experience.

Twilight--which is followed by New Moon, Eclipse, and Breaking Dawn (which won't be out until at least the fall of 2008)--is currently being made into a movie. It is hard to imagine characters living up to the level of beauty that the author uses to describe the Cullen family.

One of my jobs as youth services librarian is to determine where to shelve different books that come into the library. Often it is difficult to determine whether a book should be shelved in the "juvenile fiction" or the "Teen/YA section" of the library. I try to use 7th-12th grades as a guideline for the teen section...but that is a huge range of maturity and interest...as well as hugely differing ideas among parents as to appropriateness, etc.

Since these books are at a public library, we operate within "intellectual freedom" guidelines that basically say that it is not up to us to determine who can check out what materials...that is a "freedom of information" issue that is protected by the Constitution and applies equally to every library customer, including youth customers. The job of determining appropriateness, therefore, falls to the parents or caregivers of those youth.

The identification of materials as J or Teen or Adult are merely tools to help people find books that will interest them. I think of our young adult/teen collection as one geared toward the interests of those age groups...so sometimes include books that may be considered adult books, but are extremely popular among teen readers. A couple examples would be biographical books of popular musicians, a movie tie-in like Freedom Writer's Diary, or books that have been awarded the High School Book Award (a list that usually combines "teen" and adult books).

Library staff is always willing to give customers more information about content, if asked, so they can determine the maturity level for themselves. However, we can not possibly have this information for every book, nor can we guess or predict what every reader's idea of "inappropriate" or "offensive" could be.

Finally, there are many books in both the Juvenile Fiction sections and the Teen/YA sections that appeal to a wide range of readers, including adults...and I would encourage teens, young adults, and adults of all ages, to not forget to stop upstairs sometimes and browse.