Uglies
Tally is about to turn sixteen, and she can't wait. In just a few weeks she'll have the operation that will turn her from a repellent "Ugly" into a stunning "Pretty". And as a Pretty, she'll be catapulted into a high-tech paradise where her only job is to have fun. But Tally's new friend Shay isn't sure she wants to become a Pretty. When Shay runs away, Tally learns about a whole new side of her society – and it isn't very pretty. The authorities offer Tally a choice: find her friend and turn her in, or never turn pretty at all. Tally's choice will change her world forever...
Abraham Lincoln Award (2007); South Carolina Book Award Nominee for Young Adult Book Award (2008); Georgia Peach Honor Book Award (2008)
About the Uglies Series
Reading age: 12+ years
This series should be read in order.
Playing on every teen's desire to look as good as everybody else, 'Uglies' 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. Tally Youngblood has always yearned to be pretty, but since her best friend Shay ran away to the rumoured rebel settlement of recalcitrant Uglies called The Smoke, Tally has been troubled. The authorities at the Department of Special Circumstances have given 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 when Tally finally reaches The Smoke she will discover the sinister secret behind becoming pretty.