And that’s happened in a million different ways and a million different settings. They embraced it in the community of other children, other readers, other teens, and that created the world in their head to a level of detail and realism that never had existed in mine. They know stuff about the reality of that world because they’ve lived that reality in a way that I haven’t, because they read it as kids. When we made the trailer for the new series, I said that’s something I really want to include, because that was how I realized that the Uglies readers know stuff about the book that I didn’t know when I wrote it. These hoverboards looked like a kid’s backpack about two weeks before the end of the school year, covered with buttons and stickers and just crap. They had random Sharpie, like when you get bored and draw on your shoes in school. They had lots of stickers of people’s favorite cartoon characters, and manga eyes on googly eyes. And not only were these hoverboards local, but they were also very personal. Not spoilers in the sense that you guys talk about, but those things like air intakes. But this was Indiana, so these were NASCAR hoverboards. You know, sort of white extruded plastic, tyrannically minimalist, no features, no stuff, just this really smooth shape.

That was actually the coolest part because the hoverboards in my head–because of who I am, where I live–are very much Apple hoverboards. The math class had done sort-of maps of Tally’s journeys but using real cartographic skills.

The art class had done pictures of the characters and they’d done some costumes. They flew us out and when we got there, it was so cool and so amazing.

As you know, communities reading a book is very different than just you reading it alone, even if it’s just a community of kids at your cafeteria table who you make read the books you like. Scott Westerfeld: In 2010 or so, I got invited to a rural school in Indiana and they were doing an Uglies all-school read. Here’s a highlight regarding hoverboards from the conversation! Bubbleheads, Crumblies, Specials, rejoice! The world of the Uglies is back with Scott Westerfeld’s Impostors! We Book Smugglers were lucky enough to join Scott Westerfeld in a conversation about his newest book, set fifteen to twenty years after the events of Extras, the last book in the prior quartet (which Thea loved).

Imposters scott westerfeld