Have you read Twilight? Has your daughter?

Last year when Amanda was in fifth grade --fifth grade-- she insisted that all of her friends were reading the Twilight novels, and she wanted to read them. When I'm in doubt about whether or not a certain book's content is appropriate for her, I often just read it myself so that I can decide. I have not read the Twilight Series, but I have talked to people who have.

I've heard that the content is not explicit. It's "clean" from our point of view, which I suppose means no sex and no cursing, which is not the norm for YA literature today. However, it's the pinnacle of yearning and burning (as I described in my post Letting Go over at 5 Minutes for Books a couple of months ago). Even if the content is "clean," as a 10-year-old, she just wasn't ready to digest that material.

But then I mused to a friend, "When she's fifteen, do I really want her thinking about that stuff when she does have a boyfriend?" My friend wisely countered, "But when she's fifteen, she's going to be thinking about it, whether she's reading about it or not."

Yes indeed.

I have just discovered a fantastic new resource dealing specifically with this hugely popular series for both teens and adults (and apparently every tween at my daughter's school, except her). Whether or not you've read the book, if you have a teen daughter, the topic has likely come up, or if she's entering intermediate or middle school, it will come up.

Because of this new resource I've found, I'm almost looking forward to her reading this book in a few years -- to us reading it together -- and discussing it.

Please visit my column at 5 Minutes for Mom to read my full review of Touched by a Vampire: Discovering the Hidden Messages in the Twilight Saga, and enter to win your own copy of this book that you can use as a springboard to converse with your teen or even your other Twilight-obsessed grown-up friends.