![]() ![]() When you're a teenager, the books you read are your lifelines. They have parents and teachers telling them what to do-their lives are regulated, and they have little to no free time. A lot of adults are reading fiction to escape. They can tell me what's fair or unfair about a situation, or that the teacher doesn't call on the girls as much as the boys in a class. Kami: "Kids understand class distinction, and racial and gender bigotry. You can't get anything past a teenager! We respect our readers profoundly, so we would never hold back a political question, or a race, class, identity, or feminist issue." If you're phony, they smell it a mile away. People who think it's easier to write about children just don't get it because you don't write down to teenagers, you write up for them. How do you address serious topics while still making the book teen-friendly? In a way, we were more shocked by how much it was like our universe than by how different it was." Margaret: "There were just thousands and thousands of hours of details in the movie that are so respectful of the universe that we wrote about. We trusted the director, Richard LaGravenese, to extend and reinvent our universe, and he did that." ![]() Kami: "The book is 546 pages, so if you're going to do a straight adaptation of it, it would be really terrible and boring. Were you nervous at all about the content changing in the movie? She goes her own way and is always playing her guitar or writing music. Alden's is truly a good boy himself the way Ethan is. ![]() We love the leads, Alden Ehrenreich and Alice Englert. When we walked on set, we were so emotional that we cried. They optioned the material for the movie before the book even came out. Margaret: "When we found out it was going to be a movie, we really didn't believe it. Margie's friend sent it to his agent without telling us, and it was sent to publishing houses and there was an auction because more than one publisher wanted it! Margie always wanted to write, and I fell into writing, but we are just two people who love books. ![]() We didn't write it to be published, and our grand plan was to build a website and put it online for free. Kami: "The craziest thing for us was finding out it was going to be a book. **How did you react when you found out Beautiful Creatures was being adapted to a movie? ** We wanted to explore why girls aren't usually the powerful ones in books-can they do something besides fall in love? In 2008, when we wrote Beautiful Creatures, there weren't as many books about women like that-there were no Katnisses." Margaret: "It's a tale about nonconformity, and it's written for girls who are smart and strong. We spoke to Kami and Margaret about their motivation for writing the series (it was an accident!) and what they think about seeing their storylines played out on the big screen. As Beautiful Creatures captivates a new audience through the film (which comes out in February), the series is coming to end with the release of the fourth and final book, Beautiful Redemption. Acclaimed actors such as Viola Davis, Emma Thompson, and Emmy Rossum are playing supporting roles, which is revealing of the strength of the book's smart plot and writing. The story has resonated: Kami Garcia and Maraget Stohl's first book is being adapted into a movie starring newcomers (and Teen Vogue Young Hollywood favorites) Alden Ehrenreich and Alice Englert. It's a book that addresses pressing issues such as bullying and intolerance within the context of American history. But Beautiful Creatures isn't like other teen fiction series. When there's a strong, spirited female character and a fantasy tie-in, the comparison is inevitable. These days, every supernatural young adult novel is hawked as the next Twilight or Hunger Games. ![]()
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