Beautiful+Creatures

Beautiful Creatures  written by: Kami Garcia and Margaret Stohl  book review by: Stephanie Creager

**Bibliographical Data:** "Beautiful Creatures"- Kami Garcia and Margaret Stohl Publisher: Little Brown And Company (September 14, 2010) Softcover: $9.99 ISBN 978-0-316-07703-3 Pages: 563 Age Range: 12-17 years Language: English

Ethan wate was a normal sixteen year old boy until he started to have dreams about a strange yet amazing girl that he has never met before. That is until school starts up again after summer vacation and he realizes that the new girl at his school is the girl he has been dreaming about. That girl is Lena Duchannes, the girl that pretty much everyone in town but Ethan thinks is strange and freaky because of how weird things happen when she is around like windows shattering and also how she lives with her shut-in of an uncle that everyone in town has negative biases about. What the people in the town of Gatlin, South Carolina where the book is set dont know is that Lena is stranger than they ever could have imagined. That is because Lena is a caster, which is a witch of sorts and in fact Lena comes from a whole line of casters, incubuses, sucubuses, and other magical creatures/people. As the book goes on Lena and Ethan become inseparable due to not only the dreams that they have about each other but also because of the love that forms between them and the magical journey that they embark on together. This magical journey is about Lenas claiming. The claiming is when a caster turns sixteen he or she will be chosen by fate to be either a light (good) caster or a dark (evil) caster. Ethan and Lena are trying to prevent Lena from being turned dark on her claiming night because they know that when Lenas mother Sarafine was claimed as a dark caster she turned truly evil and lost all feelings of humanity. While Ethan and Lena are trying to stop Lena from going dark Sarafine with the help of some other evil beings are trying to make sure that Lena is claimed as a dark caster so that she can join Sarafines evil army to help plan on how to destroy all light casters and mortals. Read this book to find out what happens!
 * Summary:**

This book is awesome. The authors create such a realistic town in Gatlin that you almost believe that it is real. What I love about this book is that the plot and the characters are so multi-demensional and life-like in their personalities that you can almost step into their world. I also love how you are able to really get into the mind of the main character Ethan who is also the narrator. In alot of books even narrative books the reader really doesn't truly get to be in the mind of the narrator but with this book you get to do that. Another aspect of this book that I truly enjoyed was the true southern culture that was adopted into this book. This book was truly authentic in its southern setting even though the town of Gatlin wasn't real because the descriptions of setting, character personalities/ traits, styles of dress, and food were all true to southern form. I would not only reccommend this book to other people to read but I would stock it in my classroom if I were to teach at the junior high level and I would also reccommend that other junior high and high school teachers stock it in their classroom so that their students can enjoy it.
 * Book Review:**

Kami Garcia: Kami Garcia grew up in Washington D.C. and then moved to Los Angeles ten years ago where she still lives with her husband, son, daughter, and two dogs Spike and Oz (named after characters from //Buffy the Vampire Slayer//). She is a teacher and reading specialist and she has a MA in education. She leads book groups for children and teenagers.
 * Author Biography:**

Margaret Stohl: Margaret Stohl graduated from Amherst College, where she won the Knox Prize for English Literature. She also has an MA in English which she recieved from Stanford University. She used to work in the video game industry. Besides being a co-author of the //Beautiful Creatures// novels she has also written a book called //Icons// and is the co-author of the book Indiebound. Margaret was a teaching assistant in Romantic Poetry at Stanford and in Film Studies at Yale. She currently lives in Santa Monica, California with her two daughters, her husband, and her two beagles.

Within this book there are multiple literary elements. One such element is the use of poetry. In the book the main character Ethan Wate hears verses of a song that he has never heard before. The song is called "Sixteen Moons" and it contains some poetry techniques. Within these song verses there is are rhyming words at the end of each line. An example of this is in the verse on page 6 that says
 * Literary Element Analysis:**

"Sixteen moons, sixteen years Sixteen of your deepest fears Sixteen times you dreamed my tears Falling, Falling through the years..."

Also another poetry technique portrayed through these song verses is Anaphora or the use of one word as the start of multiple lines. As you can see in the verse above the word sixteen starts three out of the four lines. Anaphora occurs in all of the verses of the song.

Another literary element in this book is the use of historical fiction. Besides the fact that this book is in the fantasy genre, the authors have also included sections in the book where the characters go back in time to the civil war. Many facts about the civil war are brought up in this book and since this book is set in the south many of the characters are very much like real southern people with the same biased views about the civil war.