Vampire Diaries and My Tween

Well my 12 year old has been obsessed with vampires ever since she saw Twilight last year. She fell in love with the love story and Edward. She sees vampires in a very romantic light. I always laugh because I remember the scarier movies when I was younger. Interview with a Vampire scared me to death. Yes, they were good looking, but the movie itself freaked me out. She won't be seeing that for several more years. She has asked to see Interview with a Vampire and she was rewarded with a resounding no.

I have however allowed her to watch the new show on the CW called The Vampire Diaries and she loves it. She can not wait for it to come on and all her friends are watching it as well. This show is based on a series of books written by L.J. Smith. They were originally 4 books in the series until last year when she released another book called The Vampire Diaries: The Return: Nightfall The original 4 books have been condensed into 2 books. The first titled The Vampire Diaries: The Awakening and The Struggle and the other The Vampire Diaries: The Fury and Dark Reunion The interesting thing to note about these books is that they were originally published in 1991 several years before Twilight was published. I wanted to make note of that because there are some people who believe the story copies Twilight. Not the case. It's just another story about a human girl falling for a vampire. I personally feel they are very different stories. My daughter feels the more vampire stories the better.

The story focuses on a teenage human girl named Elena who has lost her parents and is in a very sad place and trying to get her life back to normal. Next enter a brooding vampire named Stefan who is as good a vampire as you can be. He only drinks blood from animals similar to Edward in Twilight. They have an immediate connection because of Elena's resemblance to a woman named Katherine from Stefan's past. Next enter the evil brother Damon. He's just a fun loving bad vampire. This begins a fabulous love triangle. My daughter is completely hooked. She loves Romeo and Juliet type stories and this one totally fits the bill.

Her and her friends actually like the evil vampire Damon more than Stefan. He is a very entertaining character. You never know what he's going to do. They find the show very "intense" at least that is the new word they are using to describe it. I'm enjoying the show as well. Hey, whats wrong with cute brooding vampires? Nothing as far as I can tell.

I do want to note that this show would not be for every tween. My daughter is 12 going on 13 so she is on the older side of tweendome (not sure this is a word, but I'm going with it). I watch this show with her and if I feel it is getting inappropriate I will fast forward as we watch it on the DVR. As of this time it has not gone to far. Damon is an evil vampire though and you do get him biting humans so if your tween wants to watch this they need to know there is some blood. This doesn't seem to bother my daughter and her friends. They are more interested in the love story. My thought if your daughter or yourself is into vampires give it a try. You may want to check it out yourself first just to be sure. Every tween is different but vampires are definitely the in thing right now.