- Twilight books compel teens to join club in Stellarton Jodi MacLaughlin knew that if she could hook reluctant readers with an interesting book, she could reel them in — all the way to the library.
So Ms. MacLaughlin, the community services librarian for the Pictou-Antigonish Regional Library, chose the wildly popular Twilight series for a teen book club that meets once a month in Stellarton.
The books, which tell the love story of an ordinary girl named Bella and a vampire named Edward, have spawned a movie and dozens of online fan clubs.
"They are intriguing books," Ms. MacLaughlin said, adding that they are today’s answer to the novels of the Bronte sisters.
The love interest, combined with suspense and mystery, a werewolf, extremely rainy West Coast weather and the conflict over whether Bella will become a vampire in order to live forever like Edward, all attract teenage readers, she said.
Her tactic worked.
"A lot of them told me they don’t like to read because it’s boring," Ms. MacLaughlin said.
But in their first session last month, the teens discussed the differences between the first book in the series and the movie based on it, she said.
"They’re getting into debates about the characters."
Ms. MacLaughlin likes the fact that the books allude to classics by Shakespeare and the Brontes and that author Stephenie Meyer gets around potential violence and horror issues by making her vampires "vegetarian." (They eat only animal blood.)
The book group is aimed at 12- to 16-year-olds, but a mom who is a Twilight fan attended the first session, Ms. MacLaughlin said.
The group meets after dark, at 7 p.m., on the second Tuesday of every month at the Stellarton public library. A separate book club, for children in Grades 4 to 6, will be launched March 3 and will meet after school on the first Tuesday of each month.
source [ thechronicleherald.ca ]
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