good books are good books, no matter what age they're aimed at*

I've been reading a lot of young adult and children's lit lately - I was reading kids' books regularly for my children's lit class, and it carried over after the class finished. It's good for me to increase my knowledge when it comes to YA and children's lit too - I'll eventually be a teacher after all.

Anyway. I have been giving this series the eye for AGES. Every time someone comes up to my till with it, I sneak glances at the blurb on the back, and think that it sounds like a great setup. I finally picked it up a few weeks ago to read on a flight, and I am so glad I did. This series is wonderful.

I'm going to quote from the back of the book, because my attempt to describe it was well, not very good.

"

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."

The only way I can describe how much I enjoyed Uglies is with a rambling story. Ok, so I work at a bookstore. Our system told me that we had 1 copy of Pretties in - but I could not for the life of me find it. I tore through the teen section, checked all our tables, dug through every single cart of books in receiving, and checked the system a million times a shift to see if it came in. Repeat this for four shifts in a row. Finally, I gave in and paid full price at our competitors, because I couldn't take the wait any longer. And I read it in under a day, and all that hunting was worth it. Luckily, we had Specials and Extras in stock so I didn't have to repeat that process (I'm in the middle of Extras at the moment).

Scott Westerfeld makes this world seem completely real, and the characters are so well written. There's so much I want to say about this series, but it would just come out as gushing. Just trust me on this. Ignore the fact that it's in the teen section, buy it and curl up in your favourite reading spot and enjoy.

*this being my philosophy when it comes to adults reading books aimed at children, or teens, or so on. I joke that being an ed. student gives me an excuse to read picture books, but really, there is no shame in enjoying good writing, no matter what age the target audience is.