Uglies: Shay's Story (2012)​ by Scott Westerfeld and Devin Grayson, Graphic Novel

 

     Westerfeld and Grayson's graphic novel, Uglies: Shay’s Story, takes Westerfeld’s  story of Uglies and tells it from the perspective of Shay. In the graphic novel, we see Tally and Shay meet and develop a strong friendship; however, we also see Shay develop a relationship with a group of Uglies known as Crims. The Crims do not trust the operation to become a Pretty, and they develop an escape plan to find and join the renegade civilization The Smoke. It is the Crims who convince Shay to run away, making her question everything she has been taught to believe about becoming a Pretty and achieving perfection. The stories line up again when Tally and Shay meet at The Smoke, until Shay is kidnapped by Special Circumstances and made Pretty. The graphic novel leaves off in the same place as Uglies, with Shay being brought back to The Smoke, and Tally volunteering to become Pretty to test out the cure for the operation.​



     It is during this telling of Westerfeld’s story that we get to see Shay’s struggle with the morally ambiguous issue of doing what she is told is right by the adults around her, or doing what she feels is right. Like Uglies, Westerfeld and Grayson take the difficult issues that teens face daily, and show them from another perspective, and through another medium. The one downside to this graphic novel is that Steven Cummings's artwork does not differentiate between between Uglies and Pretties, which is an integral part of the series, and thus leaves behind some of the complexity of the story.

 

Westerfeld, S. & Grayson, D. (Authors). Uglies: Shay’s Story [Graphic novel].
     Cummings, S. (Illustrator). New York, NY: Del Ray.