[CALIBK12] Richie's Picks: BEAUTIFUL CREATURES

[BudNotBuddy at aol.com]

Richie's Picks: BEAUTIFUL CREATURES by Kami  Garcia and Margaret Stohl, 
Little Brown, October 2009, 640p., ISBN:  978-0-316-04267-3  

 
"And I knew then it would be a life long thing but I didn't  know that we
We could break a silver lining."
-- Tori Amos, "A Sorta Fairytale"
 
"Gatlin wasn't like the small towns you saw in the movies,  unless it was a 
movie from about fifty years ago.  We were too far from  Charleston to have 
a Starbucks or a McDonalds.  All we had was a Dar-ee  Keen, since the 
Gentrys were too cheap to buy all new letters when they bought  the Dairy King.  
The library still had a card catalog, the high school  still had 
chalkboards, and our community pool was Lake Moultrie, warm brown  water and all.  You 
could see a movie at the Cineplex about the same time  it came out on DVD, 
but you had to hitch a ride over to Summerville, by the  community college.  
The shops were on Main, the good houses were on River,  and everyone else 
lived south of Route 9, where the pavement disintegrated into  chunky concrete 
stubble -- terrible for walking, but perfect for throwing at  angry 
possums, the meanest animals alive.  You never saw that in the  movies."

 
Welcome to Gatlin, South Carolina, the setting of a truly  exceptional 
middle school romantic fantasy.
 
"Even if I hadn't seen her, I'd have known she was there  because the 
hallway, which was usually crammed with people rushing to their  lockers and 
trying to make it to class before the second bell, cleared out in a  matter of 
seconds.  Everyone actually stepped aside when she came down the  hall.  Like 
she was a rock star.
"Or a leper.
"But all I could see was a beautiful girl in a long gray  dress, under a 
white track jacket with the word Munich sewn on it, and  beat-up black 
Converse peeking out underneath.  A girl who wore a long  silver chain around her 
neck, with tons of stuff dangling from it -- a plastic  ring from a bubble 
gum machine, a safety pin, and a bunch of other junk I was  too far away to 
see.  A girl who didn't look like she belonged in  Gatlin.  I couldn't take my 
eyes off her."
 
Thus it is that we catch our first real glimpse of Lena  Duchannes, the 
girl who has been in Ethan Wate's reoccurring dreams  from which he's been 
awakening with evidence (such as black mud under his  fingernails) that his 
desperate dreams of trying to catch and hold onto  a girl as they are both 
falling are actually real.  Lena has just  moved in with her reclusive uncle, Old 
Man Ravenwood who  "made Boo Radley  look like a social butterfly" and 
"lived in a run-down old house, on Gatlin's  oldest and most infamous 
plantation."
 
It turns out that the smart, beautiful, and mysterious  Lena, who drives 
around in her uncle's old hearse, is from a family  of Casters.  She is 
rapidly approaching her sixteenth birthday when  she will be Claimed.  Will she 
end up amongst the forces of the light or of  the dark?  
 
Ethan Wate, the story's teen narrator is still  mourning the death of his 
brilliant, history-scholar-and-author mother  in a car crash.  Ethan has 
maintained a level of  popularity as the result of his being a key member of the 
basketball team,  but he is a reader and the son of educated parents, 
making him the odd one  out in this backwater town filled with Confederate 
history, suspicion,  superstition, and prejudice.  He lives in the ancient Gatlin  
house that his family has occupied since before what the town's older  
inhabitants call "the War of Northern Aggression, as if somehow the North  had 
baited the South into war over a bad bale of cotton."  Ethan -- who is  
immediately head over heels when he meets the girl from his dreams  with whom he 
clearly has some sort of powerful, otherworldly connection  -- is being 
raised by Amma, the elderly, swamp-residing, tarot  reading, crossword 
puzzle-playing Seer who also raised his writer father --  the father who has been 
effectively rendered immobile and has become reclusive  in the wake of his 
wife's sudden passing.
 
Horror.  History.  Romance.  Comedy.  Magic.  Prejudice, bullying, Marian 
the Librarian...and the DAR.  It's  all here in a 640+ page-turning story 
narrated by a teen  guy -- a good guy -- whose educated mother brought him up 
right,  and then died without sharing certain relevant secrets that are, in 
due  course, revealed.  Co-authors Kami Garcia and Margaret Stohl have  found 
themselves a perfect little crease between contemporary  fiction and 
fantasy in which to create Ethan and Lena's story of  love and danger and finding 
ones's self.    
 
I loved being along for the ride as Lena's birthday approaches  and Lena 
and Ethan repeatedly struggle to survive both  the citizens of Gatlin and the 
underworld forces of darkness.
 
"Her eyes were clouding over like the sky.  'Can't we  just enjoy the time 
we have left?'  I felt the words for the first  time.
"The time we had left.
"I couldn't lose her.  I wouldn't.  Just the thought  of never being able 
to touch her again made me crazy.  Crazier than losing  all my friends.  
Crazier than being the least popular guy in school.   Crazier than having Amma 
perpetually angry with me.  Losing her was the  worst thing I could imagine.  
Like I was falling, but this time I would  definitely hit the ground.
"I thought about Ethan Carter Wate hitting the ground, the red  blood in 
the field.  The wind began to howl.  It was time to go.   'Don't talk like 
that.  We're going to find a way.'
"But even as I was saying it, I didn't know if I believed  it."
   
Richie  Partington, MLIS
Richie's Picks 
_http://www.librarything.com/catalog/richiespicks_ 
(http://www.librarything.com/profile/richiespicks) 
BudNotBuddy at aol.com
Moderator,  _http://groups.yahoo.com/group/middle_school_lit/_ 
(http://groups.yahoo.com/group/middle_school_lit/) 
_http://www.myspace.com/richiespicks_ (http://www.myspace.com/richiespicks) 





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