North of Beautiful Blog Stop: Teen Book Review

Welcome to the last day of the NORTH OF BEAUTIFUL BOOK BLOG TOUR! A huge shout out to Mitali Perkins (author of Secret Keeper and readergirlz soul sister) for arranging this week for me.

If you want to dish about Beauty and the Neurotic Woman (oh, does that sound like me and you?), then check in next week when I visit Beauty Bloggers and a few Booksters.

For today, I drop in on the ever-popular, ever-insightful Jocelyn over at Teen Book Review. Answer the question Jocelyn poses on today's blog, and you can win yourself an autographed copy of North of Beautiful.

Here's a sneak peek at our chat:

Jocelyn: Travel (one of my favorite things!) is also important in this novel. What do you think makes travel an important experience, in general?

Justina: Traveling is a crash course on life: logistics (how do I get from here to there?), survival (are you going to starve or try the fish eyes?), resilience (can I can trek for another kilometer?), resourcefulness (okaaaay…so the train was canceled. Now what?), tolerance (got it...so when they tell me I’m fat, it’s actually a compliment!).

For the full interview, check out www.teenbookreview.wordpress.com.

North of Beautiful Blog Stop: Shelf Elf

New postergirl for readergirlz, Shelf Elf, is hosting me on the second stop of my North of Beautiful Book Blog tour. Be the first to answer Shelf Elf's posted question, and you'll win an autographed copy of North of Beautiful.

Here's a tidbit from our chat:

Shelf Elf: Your novel is a bit like Terra's artwork, since it is almost a "story-collage" of rich and surprising subjects: port-wine stains, geocaching, the art of coffee tasting, cartography and international adoption. I'm interested to understand how you began to make a story out of all of those topics.

Justina: North of Beautiful is a patchwork quilt of several epic journeys. (Read: several manuscripts that never came to fruition.) So much research I’ve done over the years for other potential stories finally made it into a book! For instance, I had been working on a non-fiction book eight years ago and interviewed the coffee buyer for Starbucks, Mary Williams.

To read the whole interview, please visit Shelf Elf's blog at www.shelfelf.wordpress.com.

NEXT UP
Feb 4, Wednesday
Archimedes Forgets with Sarah Rettger
www.sarahrettger.blogspot.com

Feb 5, Thursday
Bibliophile with Jennifer Rothschild
www.tushuguan.blogspot.com

Feb 6, Friday
Teen Book Review with Jocelyn Pearce
www.teenbookreview.wordpress.com