A unique young adult fiction read that is told by Amal, a sixteen-year-old Palestinian-Australian girl attending a prep school. After returning from break at her new school, Amal decides to practice a custom of her Palestinian heritage to wear the Jijab and cover her body from head to toe. Unusually, it doesn't seem to effect her fellow classmates too much. They are more curious than anything else.

This is a wonderful story that educates and delights readers about the strength of faith and love to follow what is true to yourself. ( )

Amal is a sixteen-year-old Palestinian-Australian girl attending a mostly-white prep school. When the new semester starts, she decides she wants to wear the hijab full-time, even though she knows she's just letting herself in for even more harrassment from her clueless classmates.

This is a cute story. It seems like a pretty typical YA chick-lit story. The girls are all very girly and into fashion and makeup and boys, and there's boy trouble and mean girls screaming at parents who Just Don't Understand and all that sort of thing. But it's nice to see that sort of story with a Muslim protagonist.

I really liked that she wasn't the only Muslim in the story, either. She wasn't standing in for all Muslim women; there were her family members, her friends Yasmeen and Leila and their families, and mentions of the kids at the Islamic school Amal used to go to.

Reading this felt almost as nostalgic as Alex Sanchez's The God Box did. Even though I was raised in a conservative Christian family, not Muslim, a lot of what Amal said felt very familiar (I was never personally religious the way she is, but I certainly knew many people who were/are).

The writing isn't that great. I'm really over this first-person info-dump thing that seems to be so popular. I don't mind first-person narration, but it's possible to tell a story without first giving me a whole chapter about the narrator's life story, really. ( )

Reviewed by Jocelyn Pearce for TeensReadToo.com

Let me start out by saying that DOES MY HEAD LOOK BIG IN THIS? is a book that needed to be written, and one that needs to be read. It definitely fills a gap in young adult literature: it's a story about a normal Muslim girl in a non-Muslim country (Australia) who is not escaping oppression by a fundamentalist government/family or anything like that. Amal is just a normal teenage girl, albeit a Muslim one. She has crushes on boys, she likes to go shopping, she giggles with her friends, and she sometimes argues with her parents or feuds with classmates.

However, Amal's life is changed drastically when she makes a major decision: to wear the hijab, the head scarf worn by Muslim women. This would not be nearly such a big deal were she still at school with all of her friends who are also Muslim and some of whom wear the hijab full-time (meaning: whenever she is around men who are not relatives) as well. However, Amal has recently transferred to a very white-bread prep school, where the environment is completely different.

Amal is subjected to racism and discrimination by kids whose experience with Muslims has largely been confined to what they see in the media. The reactions she faces at home are not all positive, either, but Amal has made a choice. To her, it is a personal, religious decision, to show her devotion to God; it's not about being oppressed as some of her classmates seem to think, or making any sort of statement. Being a Muslim is a part of who Amal is, but in showing that, she faces things a lot worse than any evangelical Christian I know, and that's a sad commentary on our society.

All of that aside, Randa Abdel-Fattah's book is very well-written, and I loved Amal's voice. The characters in this book (particularly Amal) were great. DOES MY HEAD LOOK BIG IN THIS? is actually a little reminiscent of the wonderful LOOKING FOR ALIBRANDI by Melina Marchetta, and that's high praise, indeed! The main characters feel similarly different from their peers, are both Australian, and even have sort of similar voices.

This book is more than worth reading; it's a must-read! ( )

I wanted to like this book, I really did. I appreciated the author's mission of differentiating between religion and culture and showing that Muslim teenagers can be just like anyone else. But this isn't the kind of teen book I would want to read anyway. The characters, situations and dialogue were all nauseating to me and I didn't feel the dilemma merited nearly 400 pages. It was a quick read and fairly entertaining, but not something I would probably recommend to others. ( )

My first YA in a long time. I had seen the cover somewhere, and then noticed it at Borders and had been meaning to read it. I finally remembered to check my library for it. my librarian recommended it as an excellent book when I checked it out, and I have to agree. it's political in a lot of ways, but it's written in the sort of fun, light way you enjoy reading. it deals with a lot of issues I was only sort of aware of regarding Muslim girls when I grew up. it's an extremely clever book. And very funny. ( )