Vampires rise again

“Breaking Dawn” is the fourth and final book of Stephenie Meyer’s “Twilight” series.

Move over, Harry Potter, with your geek-chic glasses and too-darling affectations. We’ve progressed to vampires. Yes, vampires. Those blood-thirsting, willowy, anemic creatures that have captivated audiences since before the American Revolution.

But they’re experiencing a revival and have been thrust to Hannah Montana heights because of the Twilight teen fiction series. The movie “Twilight,” based on the first book in the series was released this weekend.

But don’t expect Buffy. On a scale of Sarah Michelle Gellar to Dracula, these kids are way more Transylvania.

“These are hot vampires, let me tell you,” says Fort Vancouver High School librarian Kate Burton. “These people are exquisite and (author Stephenie Meyer) makes that very clear. Because of their eternal quality, they’re beautiful.”

At least five students asked Burton this week to check out copies of the Twilight books, which she can’t keep on her shelves.

The Vancouver Mall Library held a party to celebrate the fourth Twilight book, Breaking Dawn. They watched the movie trailer and made Duct tape black roses.

“Any vampire programs or anything of that nature are very well attended at all of our libraries,” Erica Rhodes, library assistant at the Vancouver Mall Library, said. “It’s becoming quite the phenomenon, right along the lines of Harry Potter.”

Over the summer in La Center, about 20 teen girls met every Monday night at the local library to discuss the vampire books, circulation director Cindy Volk. The city’s card rooms contributed money so the girls could keep the books.

And at a book sale several months ago, librarians stocked up on vampire books. Vampires are it right now, they said, largely because of Twilight but also because of television shows “Angel” and “Charmed” and Darren Shan’s Cirque du Freak Vampire series.

The Twilight books are classically macabre: A young man is turned into a vampire at the turn of the 20th century. He’s a gentlemanly type who, about 100 years later, falls hard for a mortal girl named Bella, who finds him equally irresistible.

Travis Gunn, who works with struggling juniors and seniors at Fort Vancouver High School, read the books with his wife; his 13-year-old daughter followed suit.

“I’ve suggested it to a few students I work with because it’s a series, and it can lead them into three more volumes,” Gunn said.

Teddi O’Mara, a 10-year-old at Eisenhower Elementary, recently discovered the vampire genre. She read the four hefty Twilight books in under two months.

“My friends are loving it, they can’t put it down even when the teacher is talking,” Teddi said.

She said she’d recommend the books to anyone “who likes a nice book to sit down with whenever, that’s fiction and sci-fi and that gets you sucked in.”

A Harry Potter fan, Teddi said she prefers the Twilight series.

“Really,” she said. “Harry Potter tends to drag at some point, and even though the story line is nice, I just prefer Twilight. Twilight sucks you in better.”