I received a promotional packet from Ripley’s Entertainment Inc which included book covers, the first book in the RBI series, and information about the books in the series. I was quite impressed by it. The packet informed me: “We have heard from many librarians and educators that Ripley’s should publish a series for younger children especially aimed to boys and reluctant readers. From this suggestion we are happy to present the RBI series.”

I really like the idea behind this series. Books for children and young adults that tells a story while at the same time incorporating some non-fiction into the mix as a group of teens from the RBI work to solve a mystery. Peppered throughout the pages are facts about aspects of the story in sidebar and plenty of illustrations to help kids imagine the action. I think this series is well-designed and thought out. It interests kids who like non-fiction and fiction, it appeals to young kids with the illustrations and older kids with the modern feel of technology and gadgets the teens in the RBI use which are pictured throughout the book. There are trading cards included in the book not just for characters, but for some of the facts (or fiction) found in the story. The characters are multicultural and a good mix of character types. And while the focus may have been boys and reluctant readers, I think this series will appeal to any kid in its age demographic.

The covers are slick and colorful — certainly eye-catching. The books aren’t too long so as to turn off reluctant readers by its size. And they’re affordable at $5.00 each. And I believe that books are some of the best gifts you can give. Especially when they’re interactive and fun like these.

When I was a kid, I loved The Baby-Sitters Club. The first weekend of very month, my parents would give me a few dollars (man, back in the day when you could get a book for a few dollars — I feel so old) and I’d run out and buy the latest book in the series. I adored the idea of a club for baby-sitters that was run like a business with positions like secretary and treasurer. I loved the idea that they met once a week and took calls from parents who wanted to pay them to watch their kids. Maybe it was because I’ve never babysat for kids myself, and I thought the idea was so glamorous.

As were the characters. Tomboy Kristy, artsy Claudia, wallflower Mary Anne (who totally took a step up the cool ladder when she got her boyfriend, Logan), sophisticated Stacey, hippie Dawn, bookworm Mallory, dancer Jessie. There were so many of them! And so many kids to babysit too.

Anyway… I loved the books. I read them from elementary through junior high. And then I stopped because I outgrew the characters. The series itself ended in 2000. But then I discovered a little while ago that Martin wrote a prequel this year to the series called The Summer Before, all about the summer before Kristy’s Big Idea (book one in the series). And I had to read it. It just reminded me so much of my youth that I couldn’t pass it up.

So I got it from the library and reading it again brought back so many memories of the series and when I was a little girl. The story itself wasn’t anything special. Sort of an introduction to the 4 original members of the club. Thinking on it now, I wonder if this book is Martin’s attempt to capture those girls who so loved The Sisterhood of the Traveling Pants (the BSC of the current generation). Perhaps they’re hoping to renew interest to the series and bring new stories out soon.

I have to say that I like that idea. I think the BSC is good for young girls today. Certainly tamer than Gossip Girl and the other “Mean Girl” type series that are out there now. You’re not going to find Kristy worrying about teen pregnancy the way you might expect Serena Van Der Woodsen to have a new bedfellow every week. And, as a mom, I think I’d prefer my pre-teen to be reading the BSC.

Anyway, I wouldn’t say this book was great reading, but it was great for a trip down memory lane to those of us who grew up on the BSC series. Finally… a plug for a blog called BSC Headquarters (www.claudiasroom.blogspot.com — genius domain!) I discovered a while back that is all about the BSC — the author, Tiff, is rereading the BSC books as an adult and offering her thoughts on the series now that she’s older. I find it to be a lot of fun.

The last book in Beddor’s Wonderland trilogy is the best of the bunch. King Arch has taken control of Wonderland, after WILMA, his Weapon of Inconceivable Loss and Massive Annihilation has rendered the Heart Crystal inert. Creativity throughout Wonderland and to worlds far away, including Earth, has dimmed — writers are unable to write, inventors are at a loss for ideas, and the powerful Queen Alyss and her ruthless Aunt Redd have lost their Imaginative powers, leaving them unable to defend themselves against King Arch’s massive and well-armed army. The only choice they can think of is to join forces to defeat Arch and save Imagination.

Obviously, there are obstacles in the way. The house of Clubs has sided with Arch, and rounded up Imaginationists into well-guarded prison camps where any creativity will be squashed before it can flourish. The Queen’s top soldier, Hatter,  is preoccupied with finding his kidnapped daughter. The oracle caterpillars are sending mixed messages, and seem to be splitting and taking sides amongst Arch, Alyss and Red. And the Heart Crystal is failing, growing weaker every day it is under Arch’s control.

I enjoyed this story, and think it was a good read. I liked the idea of working together despite differences. I liked the idea of working towards the common good.

The second installment of Frank Beddor’s Wonderland trilogy finds Queen Alyss learning that defeating her Aunt Redd for the role of Queen didn’t mean everything afterward would be easy in comparison. Her Aunt Redd may be gone, having leapt into the Heart Crystal with The Cat and disappearing, but no one knows if it’s for good or if she’ll find a way back to Wonderland to challenge Alyss for the queendom again.

It certainly seems like Redd may be on the verge of returning. Her army of Glass Eyes have continued attacking Alyss’s soldiers, and Glass Eyes are programmed to follow only their leader’s orders… and their leader has always been Redd. What Alyss doesn’t realize is that King Arch of Boarderland, Wonderland’s neighbor, has decided now is the time to rise up against Alyss and claim Wonderland for his own. He’s devised a plan to wipe out all of Alyss’s armies and to eradicate Imagination altogether so that everyone will be equal under his rule. His plan is WILMA, his Weapon of Inconceivable Loss and Massive Annihilation. Comprised of strands of silk from each of Wonderland’s caterpillar oracles, WILMA will destroy the Heart Crystal and the power of Imagination in Wonderland. But in order for it to work, Arch needs Hatter Maddigan, the top member of the Millinery squad of soldiers to set it in motion. To force his cooperation, he kidnaps Hatter’s daughter, Homburg Molly, and holds her hostage.

Arch doesn’t believe Redd will return, but Redd’s a determined villainess. She understands the Heart Crystal, and the fact that ideas that are passed into the Heart Crystal often find their way out to other worlds, such as Earth. And it is on Earth one day that a painter discovers he has lost his ability to paint the landscapes he so loves. Instead, every time he sets brush to canvas, he finds himself painting the image of a woman and a large feline. The harder he tries to stop, the more the images come to him, until one day he has painted a life-size portrait of Redd and The Cat, and they break through and find themselves free of the Heart Crystal and existing in France. Redd sets to work amassing an army of followers on Earth and finding the portals back to Wonderland — the puddles that exist where no puddles should exist. These portals will bring her back to Wonderland through the Pool of Tears, where she will challenge her niece again for the throne.

So Alyss doesn’t have a very easy start to her Queenship. Even though she has managed to rebuild Wonderland to be almost as glorious as it once was under her mother’s reign, she still has the threat of her Aunt Redd returning, and to top that, King Arch is plotting his coup, and her personal bodyguard, Homburg Molly, has been kidnapped. At least she has the love of her life, Dodge the palace guardsmen, to brighten her days, but even he is still focused on getting revenge at all costs against The Cat for the murder of his father, and it is obvious that he is willing to put his life in danger at every moment to get it. All of these problems are coming at her at once, and Alyss isn’t sure her Imagination will be strong enough to defeat them all. (more…)

I enjoy reading books that take a well-known story and twist it into something new, such as Gregory Maguire does for the land of Oz in Wicked and Son of A Witch. Which is why I’ve started reading Frank Beddor’s series of books based on the stories of Wonderland, from Lewis Carrol’s Alice in Wonderland. While Maguire’s books are targeted for adults, Beddor’s books are classified by my public library as being books for the juvenile audience. Although, with the violence and death in it so far, I’d say these books are almost better suited for the young adult  and adult audiences.

Beddor’s Wonderland is not the light and airy world we remember from Disney’s adaptation of the book. It does start out that way, when the world is ruled by Queen Genevieve of the Heart family. Her Queendom is one of singing flowers and beautiful, shining cities. It is a land of imagination, where those who are inventive are able to create things out of nothing, just by using their thoughts and the power of the Heart Crystal. It is said that ideas that pass through the Heart Crystal are beamed out into space where they will reappear in similar forms in other worlds. It is a wondrous world, ruled fairly and kindly by Genevieve. But it’s also a world on the cusp of a war with Genevieve’s sister, Redd. Redd is gathering her card soldiers and inventing new weapons and tactics as she plans her takeover of Wonderland. Redd was once the heir to the Queendom, but when it became apparent she preferred to practice Black Imagination instead of White, she was exiled by her parents, and Genevieve was chosen as the next queen. Redd has never forgiven her family for the exile, and, together with her assassin, the Cat, she orchestrates a brutal attack that leaves Genevieve and her husband, King Nolan, dead. It would also leave her neice, the 8 year old Princess Alyss, orphaned and forced to escape Wonderland through the Pool of Tears, a lake into which no one who goes in ever comes out.

You’d be correct to assume that Alyss is the Alice in Wonderland character. In this version, she’s a princess and the next in line to take the throne, although with Redd’s coup d’etat and Alyss entering the Pool of Tears, that future seems very unlikely. Alyss’s entry into the Pool of Tears takes her to Earth, and Oxford, England in particular. Her bodyguard, Hatter Madigan, was sent with her by her dying mother’s last request, but they are separated in mid-transfer, and he ends up in Paris. On her own in a strange land with not nearly as much imagination as Wonderland, Alyss is forced to live as a street orphan, performing tricks of imagination to earn pennies in the street. She is caught one day and put into an orphanage where she is adopted by the Liddel family, and raised as Alice. Her stories about Wonderland are hushed by her adoptive parents, pushed down as silly imaginings, until she meets a friend of the family who takes an interest in her story. The Reverend Charles Dodgson, aka Lewis Carrol, listens to her stories and asks Alice if he may publish them into a novel. Alice agrees, hoping the book will open others’ eyes and help her find a way back to Wonderland. Instead, the Reverend turns her stories into a childish fantasy, and Alice is heartbroken. It seems Wonderland is lost to her forever.

Having given up hope, Alice tries to convince herself that she did imagine Wonderland, and that perhaps there was no such place. She lives in England for the next 12 years as the obedient Alice Liddel, and even finds herself engaged to marry a true prince. It is at her wedding day that unexpected visitors arrive and bring her back through the Pool of Tears to Wonderland, where she leads a new rebel army, the Alyssians, in a raid against the tyrant Redd, who, in Alice’s absence, has turned Wonderland into a dismal and bleak world of Black Imagination. Together with the Alyssians, the returned Alyss faces her Aunt Redd and the assassin Cat in a battle for the throne.

I enjoyed this novel. I thought it was fun, and an interesting take on the Wonderland stories. I don’t much like the cover of the book very much — it is quite boring in comparison to the sequels that follow. I’m looking forward to the rest of the novels in the series, including Seeing Redd (which I am reading now) and Arch Enemy. I hear that Frank Beddor, who also happens to make movies (he produced There’s Something About Mary), is in the process of turning these novels into screenplays. I think they’d make great movies. I’m also looking forward to seeing the new Alice in Wonderland movie slated for release in early 2010, starring Johnny Depp and Helena Bonham Carter. Like this novel, it has a dark feel to it, which I think works so well for Wonderland lore. And, also related to that dark feeling, I recall playing a videogame called American McGee’s Alice, which was wonderfully sad and creepy, and had an accompanying soundtrack with equally sad and creepy (but fun!) music. Check them out, and visit Frank Beddor’s Wonderland site for some fun interaction with the books. (more…)

Happy Halloween! I think it’s only fitting I review a book about monsters :)

Meyer’s Twilight saga ends with Breaking Dawn, the best of the 4 novels she’s written about the mortal Bella Swan and her vampire boyfriend, Edward Cullen. I was pleased with this novel, as I didn’t particularly think the first three (Twilight, New Moon and Eclipse) were anything special in terms of writing talent. But Meyer surprised me with the last novel of this saga. It was unpredictable (in some ways), enjoyable and well-written.

The novel opens where the last one ended, as Bella and Edward get ready for their nuptials. This was the first surprise of the novel. I expected Meyer to take her time getting these two married, but it comes quickly. It is then followed just as quickly with surprise number two: Bella’s transformation. Probably the greatest source of unpredictability in this novel comes from how it happened and why: Bella’s pregnancy. Meyer really didn’t hold back with it. The pregnancy was brutal, the birth was even more brutal, and then Bella’s transformation into a vampire was extremely unpleasant. Just the way a novel about monsters should be. I am impressed that Meyer didn’t sugar coat it.

I was also happy with the way the novel wrapped up the loose threads — the Volturi coming to make sure Bella has been transformed, and the twist in Jacob’s love life (though, can I just say that I saw that one coming the moment Bella became pregnant?). I thought the novel was a fitting ending to the saga, though it’s clearly left open to the possibility of more to come in the future should Meyer decide she wants to revisit Bella and Edward (and considering how successful her novels are and how popular they’ve become, particularly now with the first movie about to be released, why wouldn’t she want to? Cha-ching!).

Isabella Swan is back with her band of monsters. Her relationship with her vampire boyfriend, Edward, is back on track, and they’ve returned to life in Forks, Washington to recuperate from their eventful trip to Italy and Bella’s run in with the Volturi. Bella’s high school graduation is now a few short weeks away, and with graduation comes Carlisle Cullen’s promise to turn Bella into a vampire when she’s ready. Except, nothing ever really goes as planned, does it?

Even though Bella and Edward got past that whole, “We can’t be together because it’s too dangerous” drama that kept them apart for all of New Moon, Bella is still in danger, and her problems haven’t gone away. Her werewolf friend, Jacob, is still in love with her and still in hate with the vampires as ever. Her vampire friends and werewolf friends are still at war and refuse to co-exist peacefully. Her moronic father is still (rightfully) disapproving of Edward for leaving Bella to fall apart in New Moon and driving her to do crazy stunts with Jacob, who her clueless father seems to think is a better choice for her as a boyfriend. Her demanding and controlling boyfriend Edward refuses to let her spend time with Jacob, who he thinks isn’t in control of his werewolf instincts, but Bella just wants to lead on encourage Jacob’s feelings continue to break Jacob’s heart spend time with her best friend and have things go back to the way they were before Jacob got all furry and older than his 16 years. Of course, there’s still the physical threat of the Volturi, who want Bella transformed into a vampire sooner than later, since humans aren’t supposed to be aware of the vampire’s existence. And oh yeah, let’s not forget that there’s still a crazy, vengeful vampire named Victoria out there intent on killing Bella for causing her vampire mate’s death. Then there’s also the matter of the reports of a serial killer on the loose in nearby Seattle that reeks of vampire army raising.

So Bella’s got a lot on her mind. (more…)

Seventeen-year old Alex Jackson is a history nut who loves everything to do with soldiers and war. He spends his time creating models of famous armies, and in particular, recreating replicas of the terra cotta soldiers buried with the dead Emperer Qin Shi Huangdi between 210-209 B.C. near Xi’an, China.

Alex’s father, Ted, works as news cameraman for the Canadian Broadcasting Company, and is offered an opportunity to travel to China and work with famous Canadian journalist Eddie Nowlan as they cover the historic 1989 visit of Russian Premier Mikhail Gorbachev. Knowing how much his son loves Chinese military history, Ted, decides to pull Alex from school for a few months to travel to China with him as he works on the story.

Alex is so excited, and before he knows it, he and his father have arrived in China and Alex is finally visiting the famous Terra Cotta army and the historic sites of the Forbidden City. With the help of his Chinese translator, Lao Xi, Alex even begins learning how to speak the language and behave appropriately in the new culture he is immersed in.

But Alex and his father don’t quite realize that they have arrived in China at a very dangerous time. It is the spring of 1989, and the students and civilians of China are beginning to protest the Chinese Communist Party, and demanding democratic reform within the government. What starts out as peaceful protests in Tian An Men Square escalates over months to student hunger strikes and civilian barricades that end in a government-ordered massacre as the People’s Liberation Army is instructed to end the protests and clear the square using whatever means necessary.

Being news journalists, Ted and Eddie are excited to cover the story, and they hurry out to the square along with Alex and Lao Xi to document the protests; but when the shootings begin, they are all separated from each other and must survive a night of death and chaos. They are in particular danger as the military is ordered to search out all foreign reporters documenting the massacre and prevent their footage from reaching the outside world. In all, nearly 3,000 people were killed on June 4th and in the days following the massacre on Tian An Men Square. Alex himself is injured, and with the help of some Chinese students who pull him to safety, he must find a way to locate his father, escape China, and smuggle all the videotape footage he took of the massacre to the rest of the world.

This was a great story. I wasn’t sure I was going to like it, because I’m not a fan of historical fiction, especially when it documents war or military events, but this story was riveting. Told from the point of view of Alex, I learned a lot more about the Tian An Men massacre and the brutality of it all. And it was brutal — what Alex sees and how he reacts to it is realistic and graphic, and I’m glad for it. I think if William Bell had written this story and toned it down for the YA audience, it wouldn’t have been nearly as good. Definitely a good read.

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I mentioned a while ago in a post about shopping for books and being a cheapskate that I was positive I had a copy of this book somewhere in my house. Turns out I was both right and wrong. I did indeed have a copy of the book — it was just in a big container of books stowed away in the garage. So once I pulled it out from amongst my old Sweet Valley Twins and BSC books, I finally read it again. Then I forgot to review it. Then I started writing the review and saved it as a draft. Then I forgot about the draft. And now I’m up at 4:00 AM, unable to sleep, and I remembered I have this and another book to review.

Anyway… this was a reread for a course I’m marking, and, as I’ve discovered with a lot of rereads lately, I liked it much better than I did when I first read it in grade 9. I guess it just made more sense to me now that I’m older. I can see why this book is a classic — it certainly raised a lot of controversial issues in the day it was published.

The story revolves around the Finch family: a little girl named Scout, her brother, Jem, and their father, Atticus. The first half of the book centers around Scout’s, Jem’s, and their friend, Dill’s, fascination with Boo Radley — a man living down the street who hasn’t left his house in years. Of course, this causes all sorts of myth to be created about the mysterious locked-in man by the children of the town.

The second half of the story centers around the trial of Tom Robinson, a black man accused of raping a white girl; and in the Southern USA of the 1930s, a black man was guilty until proven innocent. Atticus Finch is appointed as Tom’s attorney, and the family must now deal with the prejudice and anger from a town and the county full of white people raised through through generations of racism and class differences. Through the name calling and threats, Atticus attempts to teach his children to be compassionate to all people: whether they are black or white, poor or rich, smart or slow. He believes that all people should see the world through the eyes of the less fortunate, and not be too quick to judge.

It’s definitely a great story about compassion and honesty and understanding. Atticus epitomizes honesty and goodness, and through the eyes of his children, we see how blinding and wrong racism can be. At times, I thought the book felt a little too long in places (the first half in particular), but the story as a whole contains messages that are worthy of all readers’ time.

(more…)

Two young boys, Frikkie and Tengo, are living in South Africa on the cusp of the revolution set to put an end to apartheid. Frikkie is the privileged white nephew of the farmer who employs Tengo’s black family to work the farm. Frikkie comes to the farm on his school holidays and lives in his uncle Oom Koo’s large home, while Tengo can not go to school and lives in a mud hut not far from the farm.

As young boys, Frikkie and Tengo are inseparable: they play together, they explore the land together, they grow up together. But Tengo is a smart boy and questions everything around him. He questions why Frikkie can go into the big house and eat plenty of food (made by Tengo’s mother) off of expensive china, while Tengo’s family eats porridge off tin plates and is still hungry when the meal is over. He wonders why his family works so hard to keep the farm running, while Frikkie’s family benefit from all their work. But most of all, he wonders why Frikkie can go to school for free and earn a great education, while black people have to pay to go to school and receive inferior educations. (more…)

Thirteen-year-old Mary and her eight-year-old brother Peter are the only survivors of a plane crash in the middle of the Australian desert. They should stay near the plane and wait for someone to come find them, but it’s hot and there’s no food or water nearby and they do not know how long it will be until someone comes for them. Instead, they decide they will walk towards Adelaide and search for food and water as they go. Along the way, they meet with a young Aboriginal boy on a solo trek of his own across the desert. For the Aboriginal boy, the trek is a rite of passage — to survive is a testimony of his manhood to his tribe.

Peter recognizes that the Aboriginal boy is their only hope of survival, but Mary is wary of the naked, dark-skinned boy. She has been raised in a society where people wear clothes and treat each other differently, and she is not used to the way the Aboriginal boy looks so curiously at her. She is cautious around him, careful to keep her distance and watch out for her brother. The Aboriginal thinks the children are odd, with their strange clothes and pale skin and hair. They speak a different language and come from a world he can’t even begin to imagine, but he recognizes that they are the same as him in one critical way — they are all trying to escape death out in the harsh desert. These strange children need his help, so the Aboriginal boy decides he will help them cross the desert, at least to the valley of waters underneath the earth where there is no shortage of food or water to aid them the rest of their way.

A story of survival and death, this is a well-written novel that puts the reader in the middle of the Australian desert with its beautiful description of the land, the vegetation and the wildlife. I enjoyed it.

Ben is a young college student just a few semesters away from graduating and becoming a geologist. He agrees to work as a guide and take a businessman and hobby hunter named Madec out into the desert near his hometown to hunt the elusive bighorn sheep. Though Ben doesn’t agree with Madec’s desire to shoot the bighorns, which are slowly dwindling in numbers, he is a poor man with no family and he needs to earn money to continue his studies.

The two men set out on a week-long hunting trip, and when Madec sees a movement off in the distance through the barrel of his .358 Magnum rifle and shoots, he tells Ben he saw the antlers of the bighorn before he made the shot. They go towards the sheep to collect it and bring it home, only to discover that it was no sheep Madec shot: it was an old prospector, shot dead straight through the chest by Madec’s rifle.

Ben says he knows it was an accident and that the authorities will understand, but Madec doesn’t want to take any chances with the law and tries to work out a deal with Ben: he’ll pay for the rest of his schooling if they just bury the body and tell no one about the accident. But Ben refuses and insists on doing what is right. As he turns towards the Jeep to get a blanket to bundle the body in, Madec takes Ben’s Hornet rifle away from him. Then, with both guns in hand, Madec gives Ben two choices: he can shoot him dead now, or Ben can take all his clothes and his shoes off and try to make it out of the desert with no food or water. Either way, Madec knows Ben will die, but if Ben takes the second choice, Madec will get the sadistic pleasure of spending the next few days hunting Ben through the desert, making sure he has no chance of making it out alive.

Ben’s survival instincts set in and he takes choice number two. He flees from Madec with nothing but his undershorts to protect him from the scorching sun. Over the next few days, Madec follows Ben as he tries desperately to escape him and find water to survive the trek across the desert. But nothing seems to go Ben’s way — any time he gets too close to anything that could help him, Madec drives him away from it with a spray of bullets aimed near his feet. What follows is a thrilling survival tale as Ben desperately attempts to save himself while dehydration and the sun and rocky desert strip his body apart — all while Madec watches him dying a slow, painful death.

This book was absolutely riveting and suspenseful — there is not much dialog, but full of raw and often-cringing description of Ben’s painful fight to survive his mad hunter and the elements that seem to work against him every step of the way. An adventure about one boy’s sheer courage and determination to survive even against a sadistic and calculating man bent on destroying him to save his own reputation. A fantastic, quick read.

I would not have read this book if I didn’t need to for my new job. It’s not the sort of book I’d pick up to read — a story about a young man and his friends, and the exploits of their last year in high school before they will enlist and join in the effort that was WWII. The cover is also outdated, and didn’t really draw me in. If I had seen this in a book store, I wouldn’t have given it much more than a glance.

So knowing that I would not have read this book otherwise makes the enjoyment I had for reading it that much better. It is the kind of story that I, as a reader and writer, like very much: full of symbolism and parallel meanings woven together so that you must think it through to get to the bottom of the morals and author’s intent. The sort of novel that could be read easily enough from start to finish and come away from having enjoyed a good story, but also complex enough for one to discover much more if you are willing to think it through. (more…)

I can’t believe this is the final novel in J.K. Rowling’s series. And yet, after reading it, there can be no doubt that this is the end of the series. I was worried about this book — mainly that it wouldn’t live up to the hype. But J.K. Rowling has had the entire series, from beginning to end, mapped out since she first started writing about Harry Potter and his friends, and I’d say that the 17 years of planning that went into this book should have allayed any concerns I had about the ending of this series, because I needn’t have worried: the ending works and is satisfying. Disturbing, but satisfying.

Warnings: there are some plot details ahead (though nothing that will really spoil the surprises in store for you), so stop reading if you don’t want to know anything before reading the book yourself! (more…)

New Moon is book two in Stephenie Meyer’s series about Isabella Swan and her vampire boyfriend, Edward Cullen. It’s been a few months since Bella and Edward got together, and things are going well until the Cullen family decide to throw Bella a birthday party.

Bella doesn’t want her birthday acknowledged because this birthday, her 18th, is the year she gets older than Edward, who will always be 17. She doesn’t want to age, so she doesn’t want to make a big deal about her birthday. But the Cullens want to celebrate , so they plan a birthday party, complete with flowers, cake and presents. (more…)