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Uglies by Scott Westerfeld
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Tally and Peris have been best friends since before Tally can remember. Now that Peris is sixteen, Tally won’t see him again for another couple of months. In Tally’s world when you turn sixteen you get to be made pretty.Tally lives in Uglyville and everyone that lives there is ugly. It isn’t until your sixteen birthday that you undergo the operation that will turn you into a Pretty. Tally can’t wait to be turned pretty for her thin lips to be lusciously full and her eyes to be beautifully spaced. Everyone gets to be pretty that way everyone has an equal chance.Just before she is to have her operation Tally meets Shay who happens to share a birthday with Tally. But Shay isn’t like Tally. She doesn’t think that being ugly is all that bad. Ultimately Shay decides to run away from Uglyville before her operation and join a possibly mythical city where everyone is ugly. But Shay can’t convince Tally to join her, but finds away to show Tally the way if she would ever change her mind.When Tally leaves for her operation something goes terribly wrong. They know that Shay has run away to the city of uglies called the Smoke. And they won’t make Tally pretty unless she finds Shay and eventually lead them to the Smoke.But once Tally finds the Smoke and lives amongst its people, will she want to betray them? Then she unexpectedly finds out a secret that they are keeping from the Pretties.Scott Westerfeld’s first installment of the Uglies trilogy proves to be a captivating experience that will leave you wanting more even after you read the last page. I’ve read other books by Westerfeld and I have to say this is defiantly my favorite. It is a futuristic sci-fi, but could totally be nonfiction in the distant future! The book was clearly thought provoking, yet entertaining. I will be reading Pretties very soon! ( )
the_story_siren | Jul 2, 2009 |  
My first attempt at this highly recommended young adult series.

Uglies is how at the age of 16 all teens must undergo a transformational surgery to become a “pretty” and join all the other pretties in New Pretty Town. Except it appears not all uglies want to become pretty.

I was excited to start reading this series because I’ve heard so much about it, and when I did I suddenly felt that I had just read a YA version of The Host by Stephenie Meyer, in a sense.

While I enjoyed reading this book, flying through the pages and very interested what was going to happen to the characters from beginning to end, I wasn’t as excited to start book 2 as I thought. It’s on my shelf and ready to go, so I will be reading it soon, but I think as the series goes on I will become even more interested in this idea of a new world. ( )
blondierocket | Jun 10, 2009 | 1 vote
I think this is an excellent book with a good plot that keeps you interested throughout. The characters are well developed and the situations they are in and their reactions are very believable even though it is happening in a futuristic society. I liked the book alot even though I don't usually like science fiction. The reading level is very easy and the vocabulary is not challenging, which is a weakness when using this with middle school students. The strength of this book is it's well developed plot and characters. ( )
arlis.scanlan | Jun 4, 2009 | 1 vote
A fascinating tale, a great depth to the world, plot and charachters, very well thought out. I picked up Pretties and Specials before I started reading this, and I am so glad I did. I could run from one to the next easily without the frustration of waiting. Tally is a likeable charachter and the story is one for boys and girls and aimed much more at the teen/ya market, but quite an adventure making it acceptable to those slightly older [that's me!] ( )
viciouslittlething | May 27, 2009 | 1 vote
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Series (with order)
Canonical Title
Original publication date
People/Characters
Important places
Important events
Awards and honors
Epigraph
Part I: Turning Pretty

Is it not good to make society full of beautiful people?

- Yang Yuan, quoted in The New York Times
Dedication
First words
The early summer sky was the color of cat vomit.
Quotations
Part II: The Smoke

There is no excellent beauty that hath not some strangeness in the proportion."

- Francis Bacon, Essays, Civil and Moral, "Of Beauty"
Part III: Into the Fire

Beauty is that Medusa's head

Which men go armed to seek and sever.

It is most deadly when most dead,

And dead will stare and sting forever.

- Archibald MacLeish, "Beauty"
Last words
(Click to show. Warning: May contain spoilers.)
Disambiguation notice
Publisher's editors
Blurbers
Book description

Amazon.com (ISBN 0689865384, Paperback)

Playing on every teen’s passionate desire to look as good as everybody else, Scott Westerfeld (Midnighters) projects a future world in which a compulsory operation at sixteen wipes out physical differences and makes everyone pretty by conforming to an ideal standard of beauty. The "New Pretties" are then free to play and party, while the younger "Uglies" look on enviously and spend the time before their own transformations in plotting mischievous tricks against their elders. Tally Youngblood is one of the most daring of the Uglies, and her imaginative tricks have gotten her in trouble with the menacing department of Special Circumstances. She has yearned to be pretty, but since her best friend Shay ran away to the rumored rebel settlement of recalcitrant Uglies called The Smoke, Tally has been troubled. The authorities give her an impossible choice: either she follows Shay’s cryptic directions to The Smoke with the purpose of betraying the rebels, or she will never be allowed to become pretty. Hoping to rescue Shay, Tally sets off on the dangerous journey as a spy. But after finally reaching The Smoke she has a change of heart when her new lover David reveals to her the sinister secret behind becoming pretty. The fast-moving story is enlivened by many action sequences in the style of videogames, using intriguing inventions like hoverboards that use the rider’s skateboard skills to skim through the air, and bungee jackets that make wild downward plunges survivable -- and fun. Behind all the commotion is the disturbing vision of our own society -- the Rusties -- visible only in rusting ruins after a virus destroyed all petroleum. Teens will be entranced, and the cliffhanger ending will leave them gasping for the sequel. (Ages 12 and up) --Patty Campbell

(retrieved from Amazon Fri, 24 Apr 2009 07:57:51 -0400)

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