Does My Head Look Big In This? -- Randa Abdel-Fattah

Australian-Palestinian eleventh-grader Amal Mohamed Nasrullah Abdel-Hakim is has made a huge decision:

I can't sleep from stressing about whether I've got the guts to do it.  To wear the hijab, the head scarf, full-time.  "Full-timers" are what my Muslim friends and I call girls who wear the hijab all the time, which basically means wearing it whenever you're in the presence of males who aren't immediate family.  "Part-timers" like me wear the hijab as part of our uniform at an Islamic school or when we go to the mosque or maybe even when we're having a bad hair day.

I've got four days left of my winter break.  Four days to decide whether I'm going to actually start my third term at McCleans Preparatory School as a full-timer.  You should know now that the thought of stepping into my homeroom with the hijab on is making my nostril hair stand on end.

She sounds like she's waffling, but really, she's already made up her mind.  Nostril hair or no, she does it.  And she does it for herself and for her faith, not for her parents -- they argue against it, due to concerns that being the only Arab Muslim student in the entire school might be difficult enough, without the added difference of a head scarf.

I enjoyed it so much -- Amal has a great voice, whip-smart and ornery and passionate and laugh-out-loud funny* and sensitive.  While the book occasionally does veer into Preachy Land, I think that Amal's character makes it work.  I mean, really -- find me a teenager who doesn't get a little self-righteous now and then**.  I actually found the subplot about Simone's weight issues more heavy-handed and irritating than any of Amal's railings against Muslim stereotypes.

Overall, though, lots of fun.  Some drug references and a little swearing -- even though Amal is an older teen, the book is certainly clean enough for older middle-schoolers on up.

*On Cosmo:  "I walk to the convenience store on Saturday morning to buy the weekend paper for my parents and the latest edition of Cosmo.  I'm a real Cosmo fanatic.  A Cosmo quiz guru.  According to Cosmo, Adam and I are perfectly matched, although June's edition gave us a low score on physical compatibility so I threw out that issue."

**Heck, find me a grown-up.