Book Club Discussion Guide

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Abandon by Meg Cabot

Author Information

OTHER BOOKS IN THE CASTER

CHRONICLES

# 2 BEAUTIFUL DARKNESS

# 3 BEAUTIFUL CHAOL

# 4 BEAUTIFUL REDEMPTION

Kami Garcia is the New York Times, USA Today, Publishers

Weekly and international bestselling co-author of the Beautiful

Creatures Novels (Beautiful Creatures, Beautiful Darkness,

Beautiful Chaos & Beautiful Redemption). Beautiful Creatures has

been published in 48 countries and translated in 37 languages. The

Beautiful Creatures movie releases in theaters on February 13,.

Kami is also the author of Unbreakable, the first book her solo

series, The legion is currently being developed as a major motion

picture.

Kami grew up outside of Washington D.C., wore lots of black, and

spent hours writing poetry in spiral notebooks. As a girl with

Southern roots, she has always been fascinated by the paranormal

and believes in lots of things “normal” people don’t. She’s very

superstitious and would never sleep in a room with the number “13″

on the door. When she is not writing, Kami can usually be found

watching disaster movies, listening to Soundgarden, or drinking Diet

Coke.

Kami has an M.A. in education, and taught in the Washington D.C.

area until she moved to Los Angeles, where she was a teacher &

Reading Specialist for 14 years. In addition to teaching, Kami was a

professional artist and led fantasy book groups for children and

teens. She lives in Los Angeles with her husband, son, daughter, and

their dogs Spike and Oz (named after characters from Buffy the

Vampire Slayer). Margaret Stohl is the author of Ions, the first book in the Icons Series, forthcoming from Little, Brown in Spring 2013–as well as the New York Times, USA Today, Publishers Weekly, Los Angeles Times, Indie-Bound and Internationally Bestselling co-author of the Beautiful Creatures Novels (with Kami Garcia.) Including Beautiful creatures, Beautiful darkness, Beautiful chaos, Beautiful redemtpion–along with Dreamdark, a Beautiful Creatures story available exclusively online–the Beautiful Creatures Novels have been translated into 28 languages and 37 countries. The Beautiful Creatures movie based on the books comes out February

14, 2013 from Alcon and Warner Bros. Beautiful Creatures was an ALA William C. Morris YA Debut Award finalist in 2010, as well as a SCIBA award finalist, a NYPL Book for the Teen Age, and a YALSA Teen Top Ten Pick. Beautiful Creatures was named the #1 Teen Pick from Amazon in 2009, and the #5 Editors Pick, overall. A longtime veteran of the videogame industry, Margaret’s work includes–to name a few–Spiderman, Fantastic four, Dune 2000, The pirates of the Caribbean: The legend of Jack Sparrow Defender, The sopranos, After working with Activision and Westwood Studios, Margaret became a co-founder of 7 Studios with her husband, Lewis Peterson. She has previously been nominated for “Most Innovative Game Design” at the Game Developers Conference. Margaret has participated in the Nashville Screenwriters Conference, the Tribu dei Lettori in Rome, and the BAU Institute/Otranto Residency, as well as the LA Times Festival of Books, Romantic Times, and the Texas Book Festival. She was the Director of Programming for the 2011 YA Capitol Bookfest in Charleston, SC, and a founding member of the Smart Chicks tour. Margaret has been featured in Amherst Reads, and is a contributor to the Los Angeles Review of Books. She has been a member of the WGA West and PEN West. Margaret’s original screenplays have been optioned by Clasky-Csupo and Nickelodeon Movies for feature film. A graduate of Amherst College, where she won the Knox Prize for English Literature, Margaret earned a M.A. in English from Stanford University, and completed classwork for a Ph.D. in American Studies from Yale University. Margaret was a teaching assistant in Romantic Poetry at Stanford, and in Film Studies at Yale. She attended the Creative Writing Program of the University of East Anglia, Norwich, where she was mentored by the Scottish poet George MacBeth. Margaret loves traveling the world with her daughters, who are epee fencers, and living in Santa Monica with her husband, also a writer, and two bad beagles.

Photo and author

Information taken from

Margaret Stohl’s website:

www.margaret-stohl.com

Photo and author

information taken

from Kami Garcia’s

website:

www.kamigarcia.com

Discussion Questions

1) A quote from Martin Luther King Jr.

appears on the page preceding the first

chapter. How do you see his

statement connecting to this story?

2) Why did Ethan want to leave Gatlin?

Can you relate to his feelings?

3) Why was Ethan so hesitant about

whether Lean was his girlfriend or

not? When do they begin being boy-

friend and girlfriend? How is their

relationship typical and atypical?

What qualities make someone a good

girlfriend or boyfriend?

4) Was Lena’s disciplinary meeting fair?

Explain. Why did the meeting hap-

pen? What did Marian Ashcroft mean

when she quoted Martin Luther King

Jr. during the meeting as follows:

“Injustice anywhere is a threat to Jus-

tice everywhere” (p. 401)? Marian

also quoted Voltaire as follows: “It is

difficult to free fools from chains they

revere” (p. 401). What does the quote

have to do with this story?

5) After the disciplinary meeting, Lena

broke up with Ethan, telling him that

they were different and from different

worlds (p. 412). Do you agree with

that reasoning? Can people from

“different worlds” be together? Why

or why not?

6) What did you think about Jackson

High Guardian Angels?

7) What do you think happens to Ethan’s

mother? What makes you think this?

8) Ethan’s mom told him that “the right

thing and the easy thing are never the

same” (p. 330). Have you ever

experienced this? Do you think this

idea is true? Explain.

9) What is going on with Ethan’s dad?

Do you think anything can help him?

10) Lean read from The Book of Moons

that “withoute darknesse there can be

no light” (p. 409). What does this

mean? Can you imagine all good, all

the time? What would that be like?

11) Is Macon good or evil? Ethan says the

Macon Ravenwood doesn’t do

anything to help Lean (p. 446). Do

you agree? Is Ridley good or evil?

What makes someone evil?

12) Beautiful Creatures incorporates the

Civil War into a present day story set

in a small southern town. What does

this novel say about history? Is

history always accurate? Explain.

13) Were Ethan and Lena in charge of

their own fate? Do you believe that

people are in control of their destinies

or not? Explain.

WEBSITES TO CHECK

OUT

What’s it all about?

Lena Duchannes is unlike anyone the small Southern town of Gatlin has

ever seen, and she's struggling to conceal her power, and a curse that has

haunted her family for generations. But even within the overgrown gar-

dens, murky swamps and crumbling graveyards of the forgotten South, a

secret cannot stay hidden forever.

Ethan Wate, who has been counting the months until he can escape from

Gatlin, is haunted by dreams of a beautiful girl he has never met. When

Lena moves into the town's oldest and most infamous plantation, Ethan

is inexplicably drawn to her and determined to uncover the connection

between them.

In a town with no surprises, one secret could change everything.

The discussion questions came from the Almanac Libraries’ Young Adult Book Club Discussion Questions for

Beautiful creatures.

Kami Garcia’s official website:

www.kamigarcia.com/

Margaret Stohl’s official website:

www.margaret-stohl.com/

Beautiful creatures authors’

official website:

beautifulcreaturesauthors.com/

Almanac Libraries’ Young Adult

Book Club Discussion

Questions:

alamancelibraries.libguides.com/

content.php?

pid=358644&sid=3034007

Excerpt for the second book

Beautiful darkness:

www.amazon.com/Beautiful-

Darkness-Creatures-Kami-

Garcia/dp/0316077046/

ref=sr_1_1?

s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=137358

5685&sr=1-

1&keywords=beautiful+darkness

Goodreads’ trivia and quizzes

for Beautiful creatures:

www.goodreads.com/trivia/

work/6488966-beautiful-

creatures

United States of YA Image and

list of books came from Epic

Reads:

www.epicreads.com/blog/the-

united-states-of-ya/