Find Beauty Challenge

So...I vowed to tie community service to every book I publish. In honor of the imminent release of NORTH OF BEAUTIFUL, I'm giving you a sneak peek at the FIND BEAUTY CHALLENGE.


You tell the world what's really beautiful to you.
In 90 seconds.
On YouTube.

You might win fabulous prizes...like an iTouch.
AND you help a child in a third world country.

More soon...

A shout out to:

• Little, Brown Books for Young Readers to helping with the prizes!
• Kim Edberg for creating the logo!
• Martha Brockenbrough for manning the YouTube channel at www.youtube.com/northofbeautiful.

A New Kind of Beauty Contest: you be the judge!

My mom is one of the most beautiful women I know. And since I was a little girl, she's always told me that part of our job on earth is to help others...like practicing her bandaging skills in case of a community emergency. With her philosophy in mind, I tie all my books to community service...whether it's a college scholarship or a challenge grant to fund youth-led ideas.

My next novel, NORTH OF BEAUTIFUL, is being published in Feb '09. Which means it's time for me to start working on a cool little community service project. So I'm considering a YouTube contest: iMbeautiful, challenging teens to tell me in 90 seconds or less what they think is Truly Beautiful. For every video that gets uploaded, I'll donate $10 (up to $3,000 total) to this wonderful non-profit group that provides surgeries to kids with cleft lips in third world countries. Thoughts?

My very good friend and amazing graphic designer, Kim Edberg, has started concepting some logos for this program. I love Kim's design work because it's always so layered with meaning. (North of Beautiful is about a mapmaker's daughter. See the compass, which is also on the book cover?) Which logo direction do you prefer? Why?