Blog Post #3

  North Of Beautiful
  By Justina Chen Headley

      North of Beautiful by Justina Chen Headley is about Terra, who is a young beautiful girl who loves to be “Beautiful”  She is almost perfect with the exception of the port wine on her left cheek. Even though she had tried many surgeries, but it had not been removed.  Terra is looking forward to going to college so she can hide away from the ones that bully her, but unfortunately, her mom and her got into a car accident. Later on in the book, she met Jacob an they form a close relationship as well as their parents. I think the author is trying to tell us appearence doesn't matter, what matters is who you are inside, what's a beautiful is the way you are not what you are.
     
     In the beginning of the book, she is so concern with her look, even her boyfriend judge her by her cover. For example:Terra had a port wine birthmark on her face, and Eric said, "Why don't you fix your face." This shows that her boyfriend cares about appearance.Terra doesn't want her boyfriend to like her because she is pretty, but it just isn't the way it works. From the start, Terra had always wanted to escape from where she live because people are bullying her. I can feel that everyday Terra had to live in a world fear and worryiness. But in the end of the book, this thought has changed.

    A quotation from the book:
     “Maybe we don’t have the same definition about what’s beautiful. So define it. Define true beauty.” . . .

     Without looking at Jacob, I said slowly, “Well it seeps into you. It doesn’t make you forget yourself, but totally the opposite.” I chanced a glance at him. He was watching me intently. No glaze in his eyes. So I continued more bravely: “It connects you with everything and fills you with awe that you share the same space with something that glorious. Like a sunrise or a clear blue day or the most extraordinary piece of glass. And then suddenly” – my hands escaped their tight grip in my lap, and now my fingers splayed wide like fireworks in the air – “you have this epiphany that there’s more to the world than just you and what you want or even who you are.”

    As decribe above in the quotation, Terra she describes "beauty" in a very literate way, she refers it to the sunrise, the clear blue sky, and a piece of extraordinary piece of glass. She refer "beauty" to something beautiful and sort of calm, whereas in the beginning she thinks that beauty is all about appearance and being perfect.
   
     I think in the end Terra really understand that appearance isn't everything. If she puts down herself being so perfect all the time, she might just find the world more exciting and that there is more outside. I think that Terra really finds herself in the end, now she is much happier and being herself.  And in the end of the book, Terra started to care less about her appearance and what others look at her, rather, she started to discover things around her; like Jacob who loves her, his mom who had been supportative to Terra's family ever since after the car accident, and mostly the world around her, the places she can go, the things she can do without any pressure whatsoever.
    
     Overall, and in the end, Terra had learned that what's beautiful doesn't had to always be appearance, but it can be something inside you that you haven't notice. And now she does, truly. Life does not revolve around being perfect all the time, there is more to it... beauty as it define above is a surise, a clear blue sky...something beautiful that comes from the nature and mostly inside you.