The Twilight Hype

I have not talked to too many teen girls in school who have not seen the Twilight movie. Even my high school son saw the movie with his girlfriend and she was watching it for the second time. She is reading the books, however, and he is adamantly NOT.

Do movies like this help to encourage reading? I must admit that I have a list of students that are waiting for my Twilight series and they include both girls and guys. But after Twilight, like the Harry Potter books, the books tend to grow in size. These books with their black covers have been mistaken for Bibles. They are not light reading. I finished four of them in a week, but I didn't sleep much. Still, if kids are reading, it's a good sign, even if I REFUSE to pay $9.50 to watch the movie, I do like that it gets kids to read.

My true test of a book's worth is whether or not it gets stolen from my classroom. New Moon has already been stolen from my classroom. Other books that were stolen in the past: Speak by Laurie Halse Anderson, Saturday Night at Pahala Theatre by Lois Ann Yamanaka, Tattoo by Chris McKinney and my original hard cover of Twilight that I purchased in 2005 when it was sitting on my book shelf and collecting dust until last year. I think for three years I had only 2 girls read it, and once the fourth one was about to be published, it became a hot commodity. Love the power of author sites like Stephanie Meyer.comas well as fan sites, author tours and big bookstore hoopla.

Comments

Anonymous said…

I will have to support your thesis that the best books are the ones that are stolen from the class library...over, and over again. I am sure that the kids don't really mean to steal the books but they get go into them and then they forget to return the books. I am wondering how many of my books are sitting in other people's houses with my name/address label on the cover of the book? It is a small price to pay if the kids read the book.

December 12, 2008 at 2:06 PM

Cathy Ikeda said…

Yes, I don't think it's ever on purpose, except for the student that was trying to sell my books on eBay. If they take the book, they needed the text to be in their life more than I needed to have the book in my possession. I just have to get another copy.

December 12, 2008 at 2:20 PM

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