Reviews
Books for Adolescents

James Blasingame

David M. Pegram

Mari Li-Yan Stromquist

Patricia Jimenez

Vonda Douros

This month we share a few questions and answers from a presentation by Stephenie Meyer on the Arizona State University campus in Tempe. Meyer's first novel, Twilight, a high school romance/vampire/horror story, rocketed to number 5 on the New York Times Bestselling Books for Children list in 2005. She now has two sequels in the editing stages, and the film options have been bought by MTV Films, Paramount, and Maverick Films. Meyer proved to be an engaging, insightful, and humorous presenter and often had her audience in stitches. Be sure to read our review of Twilight in this column.

Jack Gantos, the popular author of the Joey Pigza books, has a new book out. Reviewer David Pegram tells us The Love Curse of the Rumbaughs is patterned after a gothic novel and contains some powerful surprises, including a curse that goes back to the U.S. Civil War. This book is a new genre for Gantos, one of young adult literature's most loved authors. Pegram also reviews the talented Ron Koertge's Boy Girl Boy, the story of three unlikely but lifelong friends in small-town Illinois.

Mari Li-Yan Stromquist joins our reviewing team with her look at Home Is East by Many Ly, the story of a girl who must deal with the loss of her mother, changes in her family structure, and starting over in California with her very traditional Cambodian father. Patricia Jimenez returns with her review of Caroline Cooney's Code Orange, the story of how one young man's Advanced Biology research paper gets out of control. Cooney's protagonist, Mitty Blake, does not understand the significance of his possession of smallpox scabs from 1914 until terrorists who notice his e-mails spot a potential weapon of mass destruction. Jimenez also takes a look at A Certain Slant of Light by Laura Whitcomb, a sort of ghost/love story.

And finally, Vonda Douros reports on the latest short-story collection from Don Gallo, What Are You Afraid of? This volume contains 10 stories from well-known young adult authors, all of whom center their stories on a different phobia. We hope you like our reviews.

Twilight

Reviewed by James Blasingame, Department of English, Arizona State University, Tempe, USA.

When Bella (Isabella) decides to spend her junior year of high school with her father in Forks, Washington, while her mother, back home in Phoenix, Arizona, negotiates a potential new life with a professional baseball player, the usual concerns of fitting in apply. Will she make friends easily? Will she have someone to sit with during lunch? Will people accept her even though her father is chief of police? Her concerns prove groundless, however, and Bella finds instant popularity among both girls and boys at her new high school. She is even noticed by the school's ultra elite, albeit mysterious, heartthrob Edward Cullen.

Edward Cullen is a member of that not uncommon, exclusive fraternity of the outwardly perfect that usually has its own table during lunch in the school cafeteria. These are the teens who don't seem to succumb to the awkwardness of adolescence or the angst of this in-between age. They have no facial blemishes, no clumsy stumbles, no bad-hair days, and never an outward hint of any chink in their armor of self-confidence. In most communities, these kids have their own society, a closed one, and at Forks High School, this is especially true; in fact, this table of perfect physiques (and ivory skin tones), both male and female, are all part of one big adoptive family—the Cullens, led by Dr. Carlisle Cullen, a well-respected, handsome, charismatic physician. Apparently, the Cullen kids do not mix with the other residents of Forks, and no one knows a whole lot about them other than that they have all been adopted by the good doctor whom everyone calls simply “Carlisle.”

Bella eventually learns, from Edward himself, that the Cullens are vampires, but not of the commonly known persuasion. Carlisle's coven is a noble experiment in vampirism that regards human life as sacred and feeds only on animals. Members of the Cullen household are quite altruistic and gracious although secretive and mysterious. Bella has qualities that Edward finds irresistible although aggravating. He can usually read the minds of everyone he meets, but Bella's thoughts are inaccessible, and then there is her smell. Bella has a personal fragrance, perhaps it is the smell of her blood, that excites Edward to distraction. And when every high school crush-holder's dream comes true (they wind up lab partners), Edward is forced to confront the fact that this newcomer is unlike any woman he has known in his (very long) life.

Desire for human blood is not absent from the emotions and hungers of these “good” vampires, but it is solidly under control. The majority of their brethren, however, still walk the Earth in search of human prey, exulting in their thirst and its satiation. While attempting to negotiate the intricate relationships she will need to have with Edward's family members, Bella finds herself as the prize in a bloody and gruesome battle between her new friends and family, the Cullens, and a traveling coven of traditional vampires who find Bella all the more tantalizing because the Cullens would protect her. The ensuing game of bat and mouse that is played all across the American West is both exciting and frightening. The action and suspense accelerate wonderfully, and fans of the thriller/mystery, especially those stories involving a serial killer like Thomas Harris's Hannibal Lector, will enjoy seeing the devilish qualities of a frightening antagonist raised to an even higher level when they belong to a bloodsucking, spawn of the devil, creature of the night like Stephenie Meyer's antagonist, James, whom the Cullens must outwit and overcome through the book's climax.