Maybe these books should be with permission only or on a high shelf, but book banning, of course, is pretty silly.

My problem is not even so much that it’s a terrible set of behaviors, it’s that this terrible set of behaviors (Edward being stalkery and emotionally abusive) are treated for the most part as charming and romantic and positive.

This school official is not drawing the line where everyone else would, but I don’t agree that thinking that a book is not age-appropriate for a certain group is necessarily the same thing as banning it outright. She’s not asking that it be taken from the high school libraries as well, right? It’s a parent’s job to monitor and decide what’s appropriate for their kids, but it’s a school library’s job to maintain a selection of age-appropriate books. No one cries “book banning!” when school libraries don’t include Harlequin romances.

And personally, yes, I think junior high *is* too young for the Twilight series (largely because I worry that young girls without the experience to know better might take Edward and Bella’s relationship as models of acceptable behavior). There might be students there who could understand it on their own, or with parental guidance, but those students can also find it at the public library, the bookstore, or from friends.