Kami Garcia and Margaret Stohl are the brilliant authors of the Beautiful Creatures series. This series consists of 4 main books Beautiful Creatures, Beautiful Darkness, Beautiful Chaos, and Beautiful Redemption. They then decided to go into more detail with their Beautiful Creatures story and made a few spin off books such as Dream Dark, Dangerous Creatures and Mortal Heart. These books go into the lives of other characters in the original story. I love these book series. I have read this series multiple times since they were released. The authors incorporate many different creatures such as incubi, light and dark casters, and seer's. They put so much personality in each character they bring into their books. They also add a lot of detail in almost everything they mention for example the different powers some of the characters have or what the main character, Ethan Wate, sees or hears.
I am curious how they got the idea for the Beautiful Creatures series. Where did the characters come from? I also want to know why they decided the story was going to take place in North Carolina. Where did the idea for the caster tunnels come from? How did they create the character Ridley? I am wondering if they had any part in the making of the movie for this book as well because they put things in the movie that don't make any sense from what they said in the book. Finally I want to know where the idea of the claiming came from.
In the novel Beautiful Creatures, although the story is written in the point of view from Ethan Wate, another main character of the book is Lena Duchannes. She is first introduced in the story as a mysterious girl who Ethan is dreaming about. He didn't know her name or what her face looked like because it was always hidden by her hair in the dreams. He had been dreaming about her for months. Fast forward to the beginning of that school year, there are rumors going around that someone new moved to Gatlin (the small town that the story takes place in). The niece of Old Man Ravenwood (Macon Ravenwood, the town shut in). When Ethan sees her, he realizes she's the girl he has been dreaming about. No one likes her simply because she is Macon Ravenwood's niece so everyone is mean to her except for Ethan. They become friends and eventually begin dating. Lena has long, curly black hair, she had bright green eyes and always wears dark clothing. She is always writing in her notebook and on her hand, She is very smart and likes to read, She is also a caster. However she is a natural which means she can control the weather and other things such as that.
ReplyDeleteLena Duchannes is a very important character in this story because without her story, Ethan's story wouldn't happen. Things don't start happening until Lena comes into his life. He wouldn't find out the secrets about is family, friends, teachers, and his town, where he thought nothing ever happened.
With the author study project, I do not have my working question yet but I do have somewhat of an idea. Since the book incorporates a lot of detail about the characters and events that are happening, it might relate to the details and creativity. I also might be able to look at the story between Lena and Ethan and their lives, how the authors intertwined the two. I feel like they put a lot of emphasis on all the characters and, what seems like but sometimes are, little details. For example the fact that Lena has green eyes. When the main character, Ethan, runs into Lena when her car breaks down, he mentions that her eyes looked electric green, almost inhuman like. This is because she is a caster and when she is angry and using her powers (she was making it storm) her eyes kind of "glow". Another example involving Lena is her black loose curly hair and how it always looks like a light breeze is moving it. This is, once again, because she is a powerful caster and, as Ethan describes it, it is her "caster wind". The authors also give a lot of detail of the places and events that are taking place in the book. This gives the reader a very visual look of the story.
ReplyDeleteWhen it comes to the visual part of the author study, I'm probably looking at doing a poster/pamphlet, or a prezi. Maybe a graphic organizer. Of course these are only my ideas since this could change depending on my working question and what I decide to talk about. I'm not sure what I'm going to use for a book source for this project. I don't think there are any book out on either one of my authors. Of course I'm going to look, but to my knowledge, I don't believe they were very "famous" or popular before the Beautiful Creatures series. I don't know what a book that relates to my topic would be either. Maybe a book about mythical creatures? They could possibly work since creatures are kind of a big part of the series, the main story is revolving around magic. I guess this would be another thing that I will be able to figure out better after I figure out my working question.
Kami Garcia and Margaret Stohl use long flowing sentences throughout the Beautiful Creatures book series. They use a lot of description in their writing. All of the Beautiful Creatures books are written in first person from the point of, for the most part, Ethan Wate. There is an exception to a few chapters in some of the books where its from the view of other characters, however even in this case, they are still in first person. I think the dialogue between characters and the description dialogue is just about balanced. There are some cases where there is more description dialogue rather than dialogue between characters. Since the series genre is paranormal romance, they have a love story and a variety of creatures. They add some history, both fictional and nonfictional. The series revolves around the love story of Lena and Ethan, but they add others such as Ridley and Link, and Ethan Carter Wate and Genevieve.
ReplyDeleteThey make the all the characters relatable and easy to see as real people, even the supernatural characters. Lena is the quiet new girl at a big school, she write a lot and keeps to herself. I love all of the description. It makes you feel like you can see everything. The long flowing sentences do make the chapters longer but I enjoy it. I also love the fact that they put history in it, but made it from the supernatural point of view. Its hard to explain but they basically make it like, Ethan is a regular mortal with a regular normal and, how he describes it, boring life (that is also how he is relatable). He meet a girl named Lena and he likes her. She shows him that there is a whole other world that mortals don't notice because they are too involved in their own lives. Its kind of like how people don't notice things, no matter how obvious they are, because they are too busy or they just don't think about it. I really enjoy this book series.
I have written about this before, but I think I'm still looking at a poster/pamphlet, a prezi, or a graphic organizer. My working question is how do the main characters and story epitomize stereotypical teens/real problems and why do they strive to develop such characters? I also have a few smaller questions I was thinking of such as where did the story/characters come from? Who were their target audience? Why this genre and did it have anything to do with the audience? Why a male main character when both authors are female and was it difficult to write from a male point of view? How did they build their characters? and lastly I would like to look at their style of writing and they way they use their words. So a graphic organizer would work for this having my main working question in the middle along with the other questions branching off and surrounding it. A poster would work but I would have to put more thought into how I would organize it and such. The same goes for a pamphlet. I'm still looking for a book for my annotated bibliography. I found a bunch of interviews on websites and I know they have a youtube account that they make videos of them talking about their books.
ReplyDeleteThis project did help me actually look at the author(s) of the books I enjoy reading. I never read books according to the author, it was always the title, summary, and a little of the book cover and reviews. Although I think I'm still going to look for books this way, I will incorporate looking at the author of the books I enjoy to maybe find more books I would enjoy that I may have not found. Throughout this project, I didn't really communicate with others about reading anymore than I usually do. The blogs did help me think more about what I was reading but that was about the most I was really communicating during this project.
ReplyDeleteWith that said, when it comes to learning and writing about my authors I had chosen, I did learn a lot more about the authors than I ever would have, as well as the story itself. I always had those certain questions in the back of my mind, however, never went through and wrote them down or ever looked them up. I found it very interesting and somewhat fun to do this. This resulted in me finding out a lot more and getting more in depth with the authors, story, characters, and the history of the series. This did provide both my research and organization skills. I did already have pretty good organization and research skills, but it has been a while since I did a real research project like this. Finally I did enjoy this project. Although it was tough because it was done at the end of the year, but I really did enjoy researching my book and authors. I found all of the information very intriguing and helped me learn more about everything I researched. I figured it was targeted towards teen readers, however I did not know that the whole story started because of a dare by one of the authors, Margaret Stohl's, teenage daughters. I also never realized it before, but while thinking about my working questions and research, the idea that there are so many real teenage traits and real life problems hidden within this series came to my mind. I was able to apply the traits and the way the characters interact with each other with real people in my life. Overall I would say that I enjoyed this project and I am happy with how it turned out as well as all the stuff I was able to learn.