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Mood: Happy ]
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Currently: Listening to CBC Radio ]
I teach in a very culturally diverse school. About a third of my students are Muslim. (Used to be half) So I am always looking for youth fiction that is interesting and relevant to a broad spectrum of my students. Hence, when I saw one of my students reading this book, I picked it up.
This novel tells the story of Amal, a sixteen-year old Australian Muslim of Palestinian descent. Her father is a doctor, her mother a dentist. They are affluent enough that she can go to a private school.
She is a typical sixteen-year old girl. She watches Sex in the City and Friends. She reads Cosmo. She has crushes on boys. And she sees herself as a devout Muslim. So devout, that one day she decides to put on the hijab.
This decision causes her life to change. Not in what she does, but how she is perceived by her friends, family and classmates. As a reader, you get a very good look into what it is like to be a woman wearing a hijab in a post 911 world.
Woven into the story are threads of Amal’s two other Muslim friends, one who comes from a more secular family and one who comes from a more traditional family. Add to that her completely westernized Aunt and Uncle, the devoutly Catholic next door neighbour, a Jewish friend at school, the weight problems of another friend, and the racism experienced by an Asian friend and you have a complete book.
And it all works. It is not an afterschool special. The characters in this book are real and so interesting. This is easily one of the best young adult books I have read in a long time. I am recommending my school buy a small group novel study of it.
Go get this.