Picture
Bullying kills all minds,
spirits and hearts. In the book Pretty
Ugly
, a girl by the name of Angel was new to her school and wanted to try
something different from her personality. 
So she went for the cheerleading team.  Another girl name Jamee was going
through a rough time with her family and her school social life while trying to
be the best at taking care of things on her own. Neither girls fit the
description for cheerleading based on the three older girls that where already
on the cheerleading team from the previous years. 
The older girls decided to bully them and humiliate them in fount of the
whole school. Everything turns out to be better for both Jamee and Angel at the
end.  The book really has a special
lesson I think everyone could learn from when it comes to treating people with
respect.  I would suggest everyone
in middle school and high school read this
book.


               
The story is really about bullying. People who do the bullying and some
of the outsiders may not know that it could really hurt someone feelings and put
them in a different state of mind.  I am someone who has never been bullied
but from talking to others that have experience bullying, it makes me feel like
it was me they were picking on.  The people in the story picked on Angel
  McAllister because she looked a certain way, and carried herself with a low
  self-esteem.  They started picking
on Jamee when she decided enough was enough and stood up for Angel.  Whether
or not people know it or not but bullying will always back fire when someone
gets tired of being harassed for no reason.  Like the old saying “if you don’t have
anything nice to say than don’t say anything at
all.”


               
Jamee is the main character in the story.  She
struggled trying to please her family, handle her school work, and stop all the
bullying going on in her school life.  Her parents never showed her enough
attention and constantly stress her out to be smart like her sister.  Her math teacher is always trying to get
Jamee to focus on education first than school activities later.  Jamee’s
biggest problem was the trouble the girls at her school was giving her because
she always stood up for her friend when the picked on them.  In
the story you could tell Jamee couldn’t handle all of it at once and had to
focus on one thing at a time.  When
Jamee started realizing nobody was against her except the girls at her school
she started to gain confidence and let the authorities handle all the bullying
that was going on and filled her parents in on everything that was happening in
her life.  Another important
character was Vanessa, was one of Jamee bullies.  Vanessa could not stand anyone being
better than her and made people around her feel belittle to make herself feel
good on the inside. She wanted
things to go her way at all times and always need people behind her to back her
up even if she was in the wrong. 
Vanessa thought bullying Jamee and Angel would make the two girls give up
on everything they worked hard for, including cheerleading and making friends.
 It really came back on Vanessa
when some adults got involve with her ruthless behavior and Vanessa was force to
be off the cheerleading team and maybe expelled. The book does not say whether
or not she learned her lesson for harassing others but from my point of view I
think she got the clue you cannot just go around humiliating people and think
you can get away with it.


What makes this book so
amazing is that we are getting everyone point of view.  Instead
  of just hearing from one person in getting to know everyone thoughts and
  opinions on everything including on how they feel. 
Another thing that makes the book so interesting is it involve teen and
their drama, and since I am in high school I am experiencing and hearing these
issues happening to some female and male teens now and so many of us can really
relate to how most of the characters are feeling.



The effect of the author’s
words was great.  “Jamie rolled her
eyes, shifted in her chair and gave Mrs. Guessner her best leave-me-alone face,
but it didn’t work.”  The leave me
alone face.  How does that
look.  The body movement by Jamee
is exactly what kid’s today do to get someone to leave them alone, but this did
not work. 



               
“Jamee sighed. I failed, remember? 
What are you asking me for? 
She wanted to say.  Instead
she shook her head.”  The author
wrote exactly what we as teens are thinking.  I can relate to this because I feel
this way at times when I am called on. 
I just want to be quiet and not called upon. 



               
“The bell rang, and her words were drowned out by chairs scraping the
floor.”  The noise was so loud
after the bell rang that the kids did not hesitate to hear anything else the
teacher was saying.  The chairs
scraping was because the students were leaving the desk to exit the
classroom. 



One event in the book is
when Jamee really needed to go to math tutoring in the afternoon every day of
the week until Friday when she had to retake a test.  Jamee
really wanted to go to cheerleading tryouts and decided to put her math test
second.  Her teacher started
noticing Jamee lack of effort towards wanting to learn. 
The teacher just let Jamee go ahead and go to tryouts after she repeated
told Jamee the test was very important. 
Because Jamee put cheerleading in fount of retaking the math test, she
was going to fail her test.  Another thing that happens was Vanessa
sending around an inappropriate picture of Jamee and Angel to the entire school
thinking it would really hurt the two feelings and make them quit cheerleading.
The cheerleading coach found out and told the principle and she has gotten the
police involved.   Vanessa
has a big chance of going to jail.  Another big event that happened in the
story was Jamee’s parents never showing her enough attention made Jamee feel bad
and she felt the need to do whatever she wanted like running away which she had
  done before.  Her parents always
yelled at her instead of talking to her.  When her parents finally sat down with
her, they learned how she felt about them and what was really bothering her on
the inside. They now have a better
relationship with Jamee since the communication gap has been entered between her
and her family. 



REVIEWS



It's
a wonderful book! Very interesting, and so relatable! 10 stars if I could!!!
This book tugs at your heart strings, and makes you feel sympathy for its
characters.


I love this book it is so good and I could never
put it down because it is heartwarming and
loving


I've knew I was going to like this book just by
reading the summary. It's a really great book to read, especially if you’re
against bullying. I loved the whole Bluford high series and I can't wait to read
every last book in the series!


http://www.amazon.com/Pretty-Ugly-Bluford-18-High/dp/1591942330/ref=sr_1_2?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1365970175&sr=1-2&keywords=pretty+ugly


I would have to say I agree
with all three reviews. Pretty ugly was seriously one of the best books I have
read recently.  It took me two days
just to finish and that was during a school week.  The
author had some very clever advice and lessons in the book just by telling a
story.