Thursday, July 28, 2011

Sci-Fi Books We Love: Scott Westerfeld Uglies

About three years ago I was sitting in one of my education classes in college and talking about books with some of the people around me. It was a teaching Reading through Literature class and we had a habit of talking about the books we really liked. The girl behind me said she had just read this series that had blown her mind.

The series was called "Uglies". It's a series of four books its another book of what has come to be known in the YA World as Dystopic Fiction or Dystopian Fiction. The librarian at a local middle school and I noticed the overflowing bounty of books like this and we took a minute to think "why would these books be so popular now"?

Its a question I will answer in my next blog but for now.... The books!

Book I: Uglies
The book opens and we meet Tally, a young girl desperate to join her friend Peris in New Pretty Town. However Tally is only fifteen and thereby, an ugly. She will receive surgery to be turned pretty when she reaches sixteen. When you are sixteen you are given an operation in which doctors decide what your face will look like, they make you symmetrical, thin, and they give a show stopping beauty. She longs for that day and spends time making up what her new face would look like. Tally longs for the days when she and Peris would turn tricks together. Uglies have a habit of playing all sorts of pranks and tricks that are very "bubbly". However when she meets Shay, another Ugly with the same birthday as Tally, everything changes. Shay also like to play tricks that are very "bubbly" however hers consist of going to something called the "Rusty Ruins" and meeting a very mysterious boy named David. Shay has an entirely new adventure in store for Tally that she isn't exactly ready for because Shay wants something Tally has never even considered. Shay doesn't want to turn pretty. Shay thinks she is fine just the way she is... the question is, can she convince Tally that there is a choice? What in fact is the real cost of beauty?

Book II: Pretties
Again we find ourselves in the company of Tally, Shay, Peris and a few new friends including the strikingly handsome and unique looking Zane. Tally finds herself in New Pretty Town. She is happy all the time and loves going to the latest parties in the coolest outfits. However she also has a desperate desire to join Shay's Pretty Town clique, The Crims. Crim is short for criminal and they are of the few pretties who still play tricks and have adventures so that they can feel "Bubbly". She finds herself left with Zane a lot and comes to see him as an ally of sorts. He is the one person who understands her internal conflict sometimes. He understands that sometimes its like you think more clearly when you have a certain rush of adrenaline and he wonders what it would be like to feel that way all the time. He and Tally set out on a mission to find a way to feel the "clarity" that being bubbly brings them. It is then that they meet some old friends who can tell them all about the clarity they have been missing.

There are two more books in the series "Specials" and "Extras" neither of which I can really talk about without giving too much away about the first two!

They are exciting books that really take a look at the importance of finding beauty in what is real and natural.

Thats all for now!

Signing off,

Reader Girl

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