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Schools move to restrict Twilight books

Published: September 14, 2009

Edward Cullen, vampire heartthrob from Twilight

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At least one school library is removing from its shelves the novels in Stephenie Meyer's Twilight series, which explore the relationship between a teenage girl and a vampire, saying the books' adult theme might be too much for children.

Librarians believe the content is too sexual and goes against religious beliefs, the Daily Telegraph said.

Some schools have asked parents not to let kids bring their own copies to school, while others are allowing only senior students to borrow the novels, the newspaper report said.

Santa Sabina College at Strathfield was so concerned about the Twilight craze that teachers ran a seminar for Year 6 students to discuss sexual and supernatural themes in the books.

"We don't have a policy of censorship but the issues in the Twilight series are quite different from the Harry Potter classics," the report quotes the school's head librarian Helen Schutz saying. "It is not available in our junior library for these reasons."

She said that younger kids read the book so they could "talk the talk and are part of the cool crowd," but teachers were concerned they might be too young to deal with the adult themes.

"We wanted to make sure they realise it's fictitious and ensure they don't have a wrong grasp on reality."

The four Twilight books trace the love affair between Bella Swan, who moves to a new school, and Edward Cullen, a mysterious heartthrob who belongs to a family of vampires.

Catholic Education Office spokesman Mark Rix said individual schools had to decide whether the books were suitable.

"It comes down to the discretion of the school to keep an eye on what the kids read," Mr Rix said. "Some primary students are not ready to read Twilight. That said, some secondary students may not be either."

FULL STORY

Schools ban racy Twilight books by Stephanie Meyer (The Daily Telegraph)

ARCHIVE

Vatican paper reviews Twilight movie

LINK

Twilight (Wikipedia)

PHOTO CREDIT

http://www.flickr.com/photos/14486135@N05/2933271953 / CC BY-2.0

 

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Recent Comments

  1. A very fine review. I stopped reading the book because its style--pop culture par excellence--drove me mad. I saw the movie because my daughter thought I should. It was very good: deep. She's deep. As you can see from what I've said, I'm utterly shallow.

  2. "We don't have a policy of censorship"
    Why the hell not? What type of parents would send their kids to a school which doesn't exert any control at all over what their kids read, and actually takes perverse pride in this fact? Especially a supposedly Catholic school?

  3. Catholic schools should have absolute authority to keep poor quality and anti-Christian literature off their library book shelves! The peer association is a big part of this fad, and it's affecting their parents in their clique-y work environments as well. It's something to gossip about.

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