Twilight, the book

Okay my 14yo just gave me her feedback on Twilight, the book. We have yet to see the movie as she wants to finish the book first. At first I wasn't into letting her jump on the Twilight bandwagon. After all, she is sweet and innocent and do I really want her to start reading love stories? Especially ones involving vampires? Unfortunately I'm fighting a losing battle as she will grow older. She will want to read some romance stories. And inevitably a vampire will be involved. 'Cause that's what's out there.

Confession time. I bought the book and read it first. Okay, I'm just a teen at heart. I love reading the teen books. I bought and read and encouraged my children to read Harry Potter. I like an easy read. I can get lost in a good book.

Which is why when I first picked up Twilight and started to read it I was wondering what the big thrill was. It didn't really "grab" me at first and I didn't finish the book with an insane desire to jump to the next one. Not like other books I've read. But it was okay.

So I asked Steph what she thought.
"At first I couldn't figure out what I didn't like about her (the author) style. But I got it now. It's like fan fiction."

"Fan Fiction?"
"Yeah, you know, I read a lot of it online. Some is good and some is not so good. But it reads like a better fan fiction......"

She confesses to me that maybe she feels this way because she just finished reading four Terry Pratchett books. Whose writing style is far from Fan Fiction style. I'm reminded that this is the child who read Les Miserables and The Hunchback of Notre Dame for fun when she was 11. Who started reading Redwall books at 7 and missed out on a whole genre of books written for 7-9 year olds because she skipped right on over them. Who listens to French operas (in
French of course) because "the language is soo beautiful...."

Such discernment for a 14 year old.

Our mutual consensus is that Twilight has an interesting story line, is easy to read, but doesn't make you go "oh wow" and want to read and feel the taste of the words on your mouth.

I'm sure the movie will disappoint me, as it has others by not following the storyline properly, but it does sound like it will be a fun vampire movie.

Getting rid of Sin

Eric had a bit of a bad day today. Not super bad. He just had some issues. As a result he got into some trouble for his behavior. What was interesting was how he dealt with this. After a brief crying moment, I heard him conspiring with his little sister.  Then he came to me and said.

"Me and Cassie are going to go look for a super smart man who can invent a time machine so that we can go back in time and kill Satan before he makes Eve eat the apple. That way there won't be any sin in the world and I won't be bad anymore and get into trouble." 

I love how his mind works. I was in the process of making cookies, so told him, "Fine, just make sure to be back in 10 minutes or so, cause cookies will be ready by then."

"Oo...cookies? Well, it might take a long time but we'll try." And off he went armed with a water gun (the kind that you pump and it shoots out a spray 10 feet away), while Cassie had a cape and a stuffed tiger in her arms. 

The brave team was back in plenty of time to eat lots of warm out of the oven oatmeal chocolate chip cookies. I'm not sure how successful they were in their mission. I suspect there is still sin in this world, unfortunately, but it's not for want of a 9 year old boy's imagination and desire to do better.