Product Description

Everybody gets to be supermodel gorgeous. What could be wrong with that?

Tally is about to turn sixteen, and she can't wait. Not for her license -- for turning pretty. In Tally's world, your sixteenth birthday brings an operation that turns you from a repellent ugly into a stunningly attractive pretty and catapults you into a high-tech paradise where your only job is to have a really great time. In just a few weeks Tally will be there.

But Tally's new friend Shay isn't sure she wants to be pretty. She'd rather risk life on the outside. When Shay runs away, Tally learns about a whole new side of the pretty world -- and it isn't 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.

Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #6071 in Books
• Published on: 2005-02-08
• Number of items: 1
• Binding: Paperback
• 448 pages

Amazon.com
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

From School Library Journal
Starred Review. Grade 6 Up–Tally Youngblood lives in a futuristic society that acculturates its citizens to believe that they are ugly until age 16 when they'll undergo an operation that will change them into pleasure-seeking "pretties." Anticipating this happy transformation, Tally meets Shay, another female ugly, who shares her enjoyment of hoverboarding and risky pranks. But Shay also disdains the false values and programmed conformity of the society and urges Tally to defect with her to the Smoke, a distant settlement of simple-living conscientious objectors. Tally declines, yet when Shay is found missing by the authorities, Tally is coerced by the cruel Dr. Cable to find her and her compatriots–or remain forever "ugly." Tally's adventuresome spirit helps her locate Shay and the Smoke. It also attracts the eye of David, the aptly named youthful rebel leader to whose attentions Tally warms. However, she knows she is living a lie, for she is a spy who wears an eye-activated locator pendant that threatens to blow the rebels' cover. Ethical concerns will provide a good source of discussion as honesty, justice, and free will are all oppressed in this well-conceived dystopia. Characterization, which flirts so openly with the importance of teen self-concept, is strong, and although lengthy, the novel is highly readable with a convincing plot that incorporates futuristic technologies and a disturbing commentary on our current public policies. Fortunately, the cliff-hanger ending promises a sequel.–Susan W. Hunter, Riverside Middle School, Springfield, VT

From Booklist
*Starred Review* Gr. 7-10. Fifteen-year-old Tally's eerily harmonious, postapocalyptic society gives extreme makeovers to teens on their sixteenth birthdays, supposedly conferring equivalent evolutionary advantages to all. When a top-secret agency threatens to leave Tally ugly forever unless she spies on runaway teens, she agrees to infiltrate the Smoke, a shadowy colony of refugees from the "tyranny of physical perfection." At first baffled and revolted by the rebels' choices, Tally eventually bonds with one of their leaders and begins to question the validity of institutionalized mutilation--especially as it becomes clear that the government's surgeons may be doing more than cosmetic nipping and tucking. Although the narrative's brisk pace is more successful in scenes of hover-boarding action than in convincingly developing Tally's key relationships, teens will sink their teeth into the provocative questions about invasive technology, image-obsessed society, and the ethical quandaries of a mole-turned-ally. These elements, along with the obvious connections to reality programs such as Miami Slice, will surely cause this ingenious series debut to cement Westerfeld's reputation for high-concept YA fiction that has wide appeal. Suggest M. T. Anderson's Feed (2002) and Westerfeld's own So Yesterday (2004) to readers antsy for the next installment. Jennifer Mattson
Copyright © American Library Association. All rights reserved

Customer Reviews

not ugly, but not pretty
I thought the whole book was a good idea, being futuristic and all...very interesting to see one view of what the world could end up like.
The plot was pretty good, although I guessed a lot of it before it happened.
Throughout the whole book, it seemed like there was something missing and I just couldn't figure out what it was. But as I'm writing this review, I realize that the characters had no special attributes that set them apart. They were flat. Besides how Shay and Tally's views differed, they were all basically the same. They all talked the same and acted the same pretty much. I think it could've been a lot better if they each had their own individual qualities (Tally, Shay, David, Croy, Maddy, Az).
I also think it would've made the book a LOT more interesting if they talked more about how the world changed and why, and when they passed Rusty cities, it would've been cool if the author had David know what the cities were called. For example, the Rusty Ruins could have been a part of New York? That would've been really fascinating.
On the other hand, it was an alright book, and I suppose I'll read the rest of the series just to see what happens.

...
Welcome to a world 300 years in the future. A world where everyone gets to be beautiful when they turn 16, at that age you undergo an operation that "turns you from a repellent ugly into a stunningly attractive pretty." You live in a beautiful party mansion in New Pretty Town with other Pretties and have all the fun you want; and Tally Youngblood will be there in a few short weeks.

Tally's friend Shay isn't so sure she wants to become pretty and runs away to live in the wild. Doing so is not approved of by the authorities (though it does happen every once in a while) and they give Tally a choice: Track down and find Shay and bring her back or never become pretty at all.

not just for teens...
I am an 8th grade teacher and several of my students begged me to read this book to them during homeroom so I agreed. It did not take long for me to get just as hooked on this story as my students were as it is an incredible story. The writing is incredible and Westerfeld masterfully paints vivid pictures of this futuristic society.

The only thing that I hated was that nobody told me that this was book 1 of a trilogy. When I finished reading the book to my students literally the last week of school I pretty much yelled out when I got to the end and found out that it was not over. As soon as the summer started I went and bought Pretties and Specials and finished both in a couple of days.

What a great book to get lost in. Do not get discouraged that it is promoted as a "teen novel" because every adult who I know has read it feels the same way as I do - they love this series!