Extras

January 1, 2008
Gr 7 Up-Westerfeld delivers another page-turner in the fourth book of his series, neatly tying previous narrative threads together with characters from former novels but allowing readers to enjoy this one with no prior knowledge of earlier books. In a society based on "face" (a social ranking), a 15-year-old "ugly" longs to be famous. With atypical teenage angst, Aya Fuse hatches a plan to "kick" herself into the top thousand most famous people. As she researches the Sly Girls who she saw riding the mag-lev on hoverboards, she stumbles into a much larger story involving city-killing missiles and strange nonhuman beings. Teens will find themselves drawn to Aya, who soon discovers, through her own experiences, that fame isn't everything and popularity comes with negatives that she hadn't before considered."June H. Keuhn, Corning East High School, NY"

Copyright 2008 School Library Journal, LLC Used with permission.

January 1, 2008
This fourth entry in the Uglies series will keep Westerfelds face rank, to borrow his own invented slang, significantly above anonymous. Several years after the massive paradigm shift of Specials (2005), 15-year-old Asa Fuse investigates an urgent news story in hopes of boosting her public name recognitionof crucial importance in the celebrity-based system that has replaced Prettytimes cult of boring, brainless beauty. Asa draws the attention of the storys possibly dangerous subjects as well as that of Tally Youngblood, now a legendary figure. As usual, Westerfeld excels at creating a futuristic pop culture that feels thrillingly plausible; for instance, the reputation economy of Asas Japanese city, based on citizens blog traffic, cleverly pulls in real-world phenomena from Google rankings to reality TVs populist celebrities. Too many subsidiary characters and difficult-to-follow action sequences plague the plots resolution, but such problems are unlikely to faze followers of this hot-ticket series, who will expect smart world building and rich themesand will find both in spades.(Reprinted with permission of Booklist, copyright 2008, American Library Association.)

July 1, 2011
Westerfeld's unique dystopian "trilogy plus one" receives a full redesign (in hardcover, no less), from covers to trim size and page design, in an apparent attempt to market the books to a crossover audience.

(Copyright 2011 by The Horn Book, Incorporated, Boston. All rights reserved.)