Find the Beauty

Up next we have the amazing Justina Chen Headley! So this isn't exactly a guest post about folklore but I thought it was too wonderful to pass up!

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Hello, fellow Yan fans! Yan invited me to guest blog here. What an honor! For people new to my work, it's my tradition to tie community service to every book I publish. So to celebrate my new novel, NORTH OF BEAUTIFUL, I am sponsoring the FIND BEAUTY CHALLENGE. I am challenging you to define what True Beauty really means to you--is it your friends? your family? your favorite book? something special about YOU?

Here's how the Find Beauty Challenge works. Load a 90-second video on www.youtube.com/northofbeautiful, telling the world what's truly beautiful to you, and you might win yourself an iPod Touch! Other fabulous prizes for runners-up include an autographed set of my novels: Nothing but the Truth (and a few white lies), Girl Overboard, and North of Beautiful. As well, there will be other wonderful teen book giveaways! For every video about beauty that fans upload to this channel, I will donate $10 (up to $1,000) to help children in third-world countries born with cleft lips and palates.

I'm hosting the Find Beauty Challenge because my new book deals with beauty. From behind, you'd think Terra Cooper in NORTH OF BEAUTIFUL had it all: she's tall but not too tall, has a figure to kill for, and boasts naturally blonde hair. But the palm-sized birthmark on her face might as well be her fate map. Everyone in her small, touristy town knows what's hidden beneath the heavy makeup she's worn since birth. Sick of being the town oddity and even sicker of her caustic mapmaker of a father, Terra yearns to escape the suffocating grid of her life. And then she nearly runs over a Goth boy, and encounters True Beauty in him and herself.


North of Beautiful: The Find Beauty Challenge judging criteria
1) The Top 5 videos will be chosen by YOU based on the most views and highest ratings. So be sure to tell all your friends to vote for you! Any ties will be broken by the North of Beautiful team.

2) The North of Beautiful team will score the five finalists on A) 40 percent emotional appeal (humor, pull-on-the-heartstrings, incites activism, etc.); B) 40 percent content (clean, widespread appeal across audiences, plot – if applicable, scriptwriting – if applicable); and C) 20 percent professionalism (smooth transitions, stable video, non-jarring editing cuts, constant audio levels).

3) All videos must contain original content. Your entry indicates you understand this and have the legal rights to distribute your video.

4) Any videos deemed inappropriate by the North of Beautiful team will be removed. Please don't upload anything that wouldn't, say, be shown on television during prime-time hours, or anything you wouldn't want to watch with your first-grade teacher. So no nudity, profanity, or racial slurs.

5) The contest will run from 12:01 a.m. Feb. 1, 2009 until 11:59 p.m. Mar. 30, 2009. Anything submitted before or after the deadline can't be considered.

6) Justina will donate $10 for every uploaded video (for a maximum of $1,000) to Global Surgical Outreach to help fund facial surgeries for kids in the third world.

7) The Find Beauty Challenge is open to people over 14.

8) The Grand Prize winner will receive one iPod Touch. 3 runners up will receive fabulous gifts, such as an autographed collection of Justina's novels, other free books, etc.

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I hope everyone will participate for this challenge! It's for such a worthy cause and it connects to her latest book, North of Beautiful! Speaking of which, after raving on and on about how much I loved it, Justina generously offered 3! galley copies of North of Beautiful!

1. +1 entry for commenting on this post
2. +1 entry for following me
3. +1 entry for blogging about this contest
4. +2 entries for ... (this is a secret...)
5. Leave me a way to contact you
6. If blogging, please leave me a link
7. The extra entry puzzles/riddles will not accepted for this celebration week.

This is an US only giveaway! It will end on February 12th!

GIVEAWAY IS NOW CLOSED