Name: Medrine Cherotich
Professor: Frankz Kitzeberger
English 101
Section 12
November 28,2018
UGLIES BOOK REVIEW.
The Uglies is a series of books that falls under the genre of science fiction and has won seven awards. The first of these books was published in 2005. In this series of four books: Uglies, Specials Pretties, and Extras, the definitions of utopia and dystopia are stretched, twisted, and questioned. A dystopia is an imagined place or state in which everything is unpleasant or bad and is typically a totalitarian or environmentally degraded one while a utopia is an imagined place or state of things in which everything is perfect.
Uglies is a novel set in the future, where your sixteenth birthday brings an operation that turns you from an ‘Ugly’ into a stunningly attractive ‘Pretty’. The “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. When people in this society are born, they are born to a pair of middle pretties and are referred to as “littlies”; therefore, a baby is classified as an ugly because he still has his biological random face that is most probably asymmetrical. When a child reaches a certain age, usually around 12 years-old, they move away from their parents in Crumblyville and into the dorms of Uglyville where they go to school until they turn 16. At this age, the operation is performed to make them a new pretty, so that they can move to New Pretty Town where the youth get to have fun and party all day and all night. When it is time to become an adult, the teen will go through another surgery to become a middle pretty which is the stage in their life where they get a job, find a partner, and have children. After the cycle is finished, the person will die, and the world will go on.
Tally Youngblood is an Ugly and is also one of the most troublesome; in just a few weeks Tally will be there, joining her friends. However, Tally’s new friend Shay is not sure she wants to be Pretty. She would rather risk life on the outside. When Shay runs away to The Smoke (a rumored settlement of rebels that have not undergone the operation), Tally learns about a whole new side of the Pretty world – and it is not very pretty. The authorities offer Tally the worst choice she can imagine: find her friend and turn her in, or never turn Pretty at all. The choice Tally makes changes her world forever.
Uglies gives the audience an insight into what the world might come to, with the Media driving everyone to become thinner, taller, muscular and tanned, and the many different plastic surgeries you can undergo. Any young teenager can sympathize with Tally’s character; the want to become attractive is something everyone experiences at some point in their lives, but this novel reminds the audiences that it truly is about what is on the inside, not the out. Uglies also introduces us to a world where everyone looks, sounds and acts the same way would be like; where the Authorities changes the way, one thinks to suit their laws and ideals. I absolutely loved this book and look forward to reading the series Pretties and Specials.
Published by Simon Pulse in August 2012 for the 7th graders and up. The price ranges between 10 to 13 dollars depending on where you buy it. ISBN 9781442479395
