Thursday, November 6, 2008
Uglies
When I started off reading Uglies, I didn't think I was going to like it. It just seemed like such a strange story, but I ended up really enjoying it. I'm very interested to know what happens in the sequel, Pretties. My role for the book discussion was textual, and I decided that the genre was science fiction. New Pretty Town and Uglyville were futuristic cities. They could talk to their rooms and the rooms would talk back and ride around on hoverboards. I believe that the point of being "pretty" was to make everyone equal, but when someone was "ugly" they were looked down upon, made fun of, had no social life, etc. This seems very discriminating, and on top of it when the surgery was done there were lesions in the brain. This book brought out many different issues, and although it is appropriate for middle schoolers, I think the main issues throughout the story are more beneficial for high school students.
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4 comments:
I agree with you that it is defiantly a book aimed more for high schoolers rather than middle schoolers. I also think that the book is a science fiction book because of the hoverboards, however I don't necessarily agree that the uglies had no social life because Tally met Shay and they would go on their adventures and ride around all night with one-another and became really close friends. So although they weren't considered as popular as the pretties, I think that they did have some form of a social life.
I think this book would be a great book for kids in late middle school. Kids that age are starting to see more and more peer pressures around them and this book can teach them that it’s ok to look different or act differently than everyone else. A lot of their friends may be headed off to another high school so this shows that you may lose touch of some close friends just as Tally and Peris did.
I never thought about kids being split up after middle school like peris going to pretty town, but it totally makes sense. I agree with the age appropriateness of late middle school and high school because I think they would be most able to relate to the problems the characters in the story are faced with. I know there was a concern in class that the kids might not get the overall message and think that they are ugly because they are not perfect or symmetrical but I think at older ages they would be able to understand what the author was really getting at.
I think that this book would be a great book for middle to high school depending on your group of kids. I myself enjoyed the book. My only 'problem' with it was that for me the language was too simplistic for me to understand. But overall this book really hits at some very relavent questions especially to young adults. What kind of sucks was that for my part as the intertexual response, I had to look up the author's other works. His other works summaries weren't available, so I was left reading the summaries for the next two books, Pretties and Specials.
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