(1888PressRelease)
April 19, 2009 - MOUNTAIN VIEW, CA – The immensely popular book series spawned a blockbuster motion picture in 2008. Shmoop challenges students, teachers, and librarians to answer the question, “is Twilight great literature, or simply entertainment?”.
“The Twilight novels, much like the Harry Potter series before them, have captured the imaginations of young readers,” said Ana Rowena McCullough, VP of Content at Shmoop. “Because we are a company of academics, we had some intense internal debates over whether it was appropriate to analyze Twilight in the same way that we approach classic works such as Shakespeare’s Romeo and Juliet or T.S. Eliot’s The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock.
We concluded that Twilight’s popularity among young readers was a great opportunity for Shmoop to help students find deeper joy and understanding in literature. Luckily, many educators have already written us to thank Shmoop for exploring Twilight in this way.”
Shmoop’s analysis of Twilight helps students recognize symbolism, themes, characterization, genre, style, and many other technical aspects of the book. Shmoop also helps students connect Twilight with other great classics, such as Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein, Nathaniel Hawthorne's The Scarlet Letter, and Charlotte Brontë's Jane Eyre. “We want to encourage young fans of Twilight to explore other great works of literature that they didn’t even realize they might love,” said McCullough.
Shmoop offers study guides and teaching resources for literature, US history, poetry, and essay writing, with more subjects coming soon. Shmoop is produced by academics from top U.S. universities, including Stanford University, UC Berkeley, and Harvard University. Shmoop’s analysis of Twilight is available at http://www.shmoop.com/twilight.
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