Bogus to Bubbly: An Insider's Guide to the World of Uglies

A fun and interesting companion to the Uglies series that any fan probably wants to read. It's not the kind of thing you'd want to waste money on unless you're hard-core, but pick it up from a library, or just read it right in the bookstore. It's short enough.

In these pages, Scott Westerfeld authors his own insider's guide to the world he created, which is great for a lot of reasons. One, it doesn't get any better than when the author tells you about his own thought processes, ideas, and hidden meanings. Also, you get a wonderful feel for Westerfeld as a person, and he seems like a great guy with a sense of humor, really dedicated to his characters, universe, and writing in general.

In this guide, you'll find maps, histories of both the show more Rusties and Tally's world, the science behind hoverboards and nanos, the phenomenons of ideal beauty, cliques, and plastic surgery, meanings behind the names of characters, the ins-and-outs of the series' slang language, and various other tidbits that are just cool to know (like the connections between each books' "last words" and the real-world Radical Honesty cult).

Probably one of the better companion guides out there. show less

So far, I've enjoyed hearing the real-life story that inspired Westerfeld's idea for the novel, but I could have, had I searched it out, found that on the internet. I've never read an "insider's guide" to a book or book series before and had always wondered what the heck they are. So I'm trying it out. I wonder if I'd have liked this more as a teen. I guess I'm supposed to pretend that I AM a character in Westerfield's utopia, and if I were, here is the handbook for operating the hoverboards. Here's a map of Prettyland. Here is a more in-depth summary of the rules, and the history, etc.

Update: I actually liked this! There's a section that gets way too scientific for me about the science behind the sci-fi (it gave me a headache) but show more there's also a lot of literary analysis & introspection on Westerfeld's part that would satisfy any lit major, except that it may give away a bit too much. But since his audience isn't college English majors, it should be okay.

In this guide, you can learn more about Westerfeld's fictional society as if it were real, find out the "why" behind many of the choices he made (character's names, plot elements, last lines of the books, etc.), find out which sci-fi elements are actually possible or in existance today, what he hoped readers would take away from the book, and even learn how to create your own slang via the rules he followed in making his. His super-fan club would enjoy seeing drafts of Extras, and I enjoyed not having to read Extras because he summarizes the plot & presents an in-depth analysis of its themes, so I don't have to read it. Yay! All was resolved for me at the end of Specials, anyway.

Who would I recommend this to? It would only be to students who not only read the entire series, but kids who DEVOURED it and never struggled with comprehension, because the reading is actually more complex in this guide than the novels themselves. I don't think he pared down his vocabulary at all, and wrote like he was talking to peers, not kids. show less

When I heard that Scott Westerfield had put together a companion volume to his Uglies series, I was stoked. I love me a good companion volume. I logged onto the library's website and put in a request for it straight away.

And I'll tell you, the book is just as fun as it sounds. It's evidently geared at younger Uglies fans, (which does make sense, this being a YA series and all), but there's enough good stuff here that older fans will learn something, too. Westerfield includes a hoverboard manual, maps, (maps!!!!), a history of Tally's world, a guide to life phases in the Prettytime, notes on all the cliques, information on the science that went into the series, notes on the language Tally and her friends use, a glossary, and some other show more miscellaneous goodness.

Personally, I got the most out of the science stuff. I'm sure you science types will find it overly simplistic, but my artistic little self thought Westerfield did a great job of putting everyting into layman's terms. He writes about where the technology in Tally's world comes from. Some things, like nanos, are time-honoured sci fi traditions. Others, like the self-heating food packets, are real, while skintennas and the like are Westerfeld's own invention. Perhaps the most interesting chapter, though, deals with the science of beauty. Westerfeld describes the various theories that went into the Prettytime. It's fascinating stuff.

If you enjoyed the Uglies series, I'm sure you'll get a kick out of this book. It's a fast, fun read.

(This review originally appeared on my blog, Stella Matutina). show less

This is only interesting if you read and liked the Uglies series. I did and did and enjoyed this a lot. It puts everything together: history of the Rusties and Pretty-time, character profiles, technology explanations, etc.

I'm classifying this as non-fiction even though it's about half non-fiction and half fictional non-fiction. In Bogus to Bubbly, Westerfeld talks about how he came up with the idea for his Uglies series and for various things in the books, including the slang, the names, and the technologies. He also includes "instruction manuals" for some technologies, like the hoverboards, and "history" passages, such as how future generations would view what happened in the books. It was an interesting, if quick, read.

This was a cool insite into the author's mind. I liked reading about how he got some of the ideas, also he pointed out things I didn't quite catch while reading the series, so I'm glad I read this book. But once is enough.

One of my all time favorite series is Scott Westerfeld's "Uglies". I was so thrilled that I bought a set for our morning school book club. I am now down to four books because students have loved them so much they have kept them. In Bogus to Bubbly, Westerfeld answers all of those questions we had as we read the series. How did he come up with the names and the slang words he used in his books? How did he create the science based items in his book and what are the chances that we will see them in the future. All of these questions and more are answered in this book. It is a definite for anyone who loves the "Uglies" series.