Bismarck, North Dakota - News

Like countless other teenagers, Katherine Thomas of Fort Lauderdale, Fla., has a hot date Friday night. Hers is with a book. She is not alone.

"I pre-ordered it at Barnes & Noble and after I pick it up I will probably read it right through right away," said Thomas, a 2007 graduate of St. Thomas Aquinas High, home for the summer after her freshman year at Florida State University.

The lucky book is "Breaking Dawn" by Stephenie Meyer, (Little, Brown, $22.99, ages 12-up) the fourth volume in a paranormal romance series about ordinary teenager Isabella Swan and her extraordinary admirers - the impossibly gorgeous Edward Cullen, who is a vampire, and the ruggedly handsome Jacob Black, who is a werewolf.

Teen girls (and many of their mothers) have made the series into an international blockbuster, with nearly eight million copies sold worldwide.

As they did for "Harry Potter," many booksellers are marking the release of "Breaking Dawn" with midnight parties Friday. (The book officially goes on sale at 12:01 a.m. Aug. 2.) Books & Books in Coral Gables, Fla., is styling its event as an engagement party - with red and black-accented invitations that promise a celebration of the (possible? probable?) marriage of Edward and Bella that may or may not take place in the new book.

Across the country, booksellers are staging proms, vampire "balls," trivia contests, scavenger hunts and at one store in Vermont, an Edward Cullen look-alike contest. (That ought to get teenage girls into a bookstore on a Friday night.) One store in California is parking the bloodmobile out front, hoping books about a family of throat-biters will inspire fans to roll up their sleeves. At the King's English Bookshop in Salt Lake City, Utah, the final results of an ongoing poll about which suitor Bella should pair off with will be announced at the stroke of midnight. Readers loyal to Jacob might want to start stuffing the ballot box by voting here: http://kingsenglish.booksense.com/NASApp/store/IndexJsp. Edward's currently ahead with 81 percent of the vote.

Meyer's publisher ordered a first printing of 3.5 million copies of "Breaking Dawn," in a field where 50,000 copies sold is considered a very good showing.

Like the Potter series, the "Twilight" books started humbly and grew organically through teenager word-of-mouth (probably teenager text-messaging, but you know what I mean.) Meyer, 34, relied on the Internet not only to write the book (she used Google Images to view photographs of Forks, Wash., where the story is set) but to market it. Before her series took off, she was a stay-at-home mom with three young sons. There are now hundreds of Internet fan sites and YouTube videos promoting her books for her.

Despite its popular acclaim - a film based on the first book, "Twilight," is scheduled to open on Dec. 12 - critical reception has been mixed. Bella's enthrallment with Edward, and her near-constant need of being rescued, make some women (including me) cringe. The second book, "New Moon," "may leave the reader wishing for ... a more empowered and self-assured heroine," wrote Angelica Delgado in the journal, VOYA.

Nobody really wants to throw a wet towel on teenage consumption of thick books, however. As Gail Collins, former New York Times editorial page editor wrote in a July 12 op-ed column: "Before you make fun of this, I want you to seriously consider whether you're interested in denigrating people who spend their leisure time actually reading books rather than watching 'America's Got Talent.'" Amen to that, sister.

And though I've brought up the bad-role model issue with dozens of "Twilight" readers, to a girl they tell me Bella's blandness makes it easier to insert somebody else in the leading role - say, themselves.

"It's not only a romance," said Thomas, the FSU sophomore. "There's danger, and action. It's funny. I've read other romances - Nicholas Sparks - and they are sappy. These books, overall, are awesome."