The Twilight Saga

My nieces are great girls. They love God, are morally straight, mentally pure, involved in community, church and charity work. They respect their parents, dress modestly, purchase wisely and know how to interact with adults. They can cook, clean, and play a mean game of euchre. They put up with our noisy family imposing on theirs with grace. Their brother does, too.

They also teach me what the latest cool things are. They laugh and roll their eyes that I blog and do Facebook, it is so NOT my generation, none of their other aunties can be bothered with all that internet stuff. . I look forward to finding out what makes them oohh and aaawww each time we come home.

This time, I didn’t have to ask. The screensavers all over the house had the names “Bella & Edward” or “Bella & Jacob”, and photos from a movie trailer of a young couple where the guy looks a little eerie and the girl is floating in teenage infatuation. Their drop-down bar is filled with websites having to do with: The Twilight Saga. The girls are curled up on the coaches, heads buried in honkin big black books, so disengaged from family noises and involved in the story you’d think they had ipods in their ears. teh subject: a love story between a girl and a …. vampire.

VAMPIRE????? I looked at my sis-in-law, shocked, and she just shrugged her shoulders and gave me the palms up “What can I do?” look of a mother who tried to battle the tide and lost early on. Aunt Jane said “You’ll have to let the girls explain”. Sheets of long hair, formerly acting as a curtain between the real world and Twilight world, parted as faces eager to pounce on another potential convert to an addiction as strong as vampire-like blood-lust.

I was immediately surrounded by teenage female animation, explaining the plot without giving away spoilers. Junior Bella moves to Forks, a mist-shrouded teeny-town in the Pacific Northwest. A plain-Jane in her former Phoenix school, she realizes she is hot stuff in Forks and unprepared for the shower of testosterone-fueled attention. From across the cafeteria one day at lunch break, she sees a group of five unbelievably beautiful, designer-clothed teens talking quietly; then all throw away their full lunch trays, untouched. Two obvious couples, one stunningly handsome golden-eyed young man.

As fate (and author Stephenie Meyer) would have it, Bella is seated next to “Edward” for a class. He seems positively angered by her presence, his eyes twinged black with rage. The girls gave me a little clue: Edward is a vampire, and falls in love with off-limits human Bella. “So”, I said, ‘Is it like “Harry Potter’ for girls?” Yes, yes, those sheets of light brown hair bob in a semi-circle around me. “So, does such a book draw you closer to God, is their some redeeming value that covers for the creep-factor of having her love a guy who wants to suck her blood?” Yes, yes, Aunt Kinzi, there is, we’ll just have to think about it to find it.

OK, those girls sparked my curiosity and I started the first book. They’ve read the series three times each. It only took about three pages to draw me in, and every spare minute I could I was reading.

Well, gotta get supper going, so I’ll have to return to this. And tell you where the WEREWOLF fits in. Goodness, Bella, as if a vampire wasn’t enough. Yabayay.