Extras
It’s been two years since rebel Tally Youngblood took down the Specials regime. The world is in a complete cultural renaissance and it's all monitored on about a bazillion different cameras. The world is like a gigantic game of ‘American Idol’. Popularity rules: Whoever is getting the most buzz gets the most votes. As if being fifteen doesn't suck enough, Aya Fuse's rank of 451,369 is so low, she's a total nobody: an extra. But Aya doesn't care; she just wants to lie low with her drone, Moggle. Then Aya meets a clique of girls who pull crazy tricks, yet are deeply secretive of it. Aya wants desperately to kick their story, to show everyone how intensely cool the Sly Girls are. But doing so would propel her out of extra-land and into the world of fame, celebrity...and extreme danger. A world she's not prepared for.
ALA Teens' Top Ten (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.