saferia read and liked Helen's review of Does My Head Look Big In This?:

"I think the author (or publisher?) had a few goals in mind for this book.

1. Provide awareness and understanding for the lifestyle and beliefs of Islam.
2. Show someone trying to be herself in the face of adversity.
3. Illustr...more I think the author (or publisher?) had a few goals in mind for this book.

1. Provide awareness and understanding for the lifestyle and beliefs of Islam.
2. Show someone trying to be herself in the face of adversity.
3. Illustrate a whole range of family/personal/religious issues that others go through and link them to show that the situations may be slightly different, but we all go through similar insecurities about our cultures and being different.
4. Show that a teen Muslim girl is pretty much still your average, ordinary teen girl.

All in all, this was nicely done. I can't really think of any other book out on the market that tells a similar story.

However, I think the author went WAY overboard for goal #4. Amal comes across as being far too normal. And I am not saying that she should have been abnormal in some way because of her religion -- I'm saying that usually you wouldn't write a story about someone unless she was slightly out of the ordinary anyway. So if it weren't for the other goals of this book, Amal would be a ridiculously boring person to write a story about. She was just abnormally normal, so nondescript that it was a bit painful at times.

It's possible I read too many books about teen spies, teen "chosen ones," or teens with special powers. Amal was just completely NORMAL.

There was some other thing I wanted to say about this, but I can't remember what it was.(less) "