Does My Head Look Big In This?

Author: Randa Abdel-Fattah

Rating: 3/5

Pages: 351

Year Published: 2005

Synopsis (From Goodreads): “When sixteen-year-old Amal decides to wear the hijab full-time, her entire world changes, all because of a piece of cloth...

Sixteen-year-old Amal makes the decision to start wearing the hijab full-time and everyone has a reaction. Her parents, her teachers, her friends, people on the street. But she stands by her decision to embrace her faith and all that it is, even if it does make her a little different from everyone else.

Can she handle the taunts of "towel head," the prejudice of her classmates, and still attract the cutest boy in school? Brilliantly funny and poignant, Randa Abdel-Fattah's debut novel will strike a chord in all teenage readers, no matter what their beliefs.”

[Eating Disorder Trigger and Spoiler Warning]

I’m going to start by explaining why I rated this book 3/5. I really liked the parts when she talked about religion, Leila’s struggle with her parents and Mrs Vaselli’s relationship with her son, but the parts with Adam (and some other parts too) were just childish. I felt too old for the book in that way as it didn’t interest me.

The book kept taking turns I didn’t expect, and Amal’s strong belief was the best part of the whole book. The support she got and the problems brought up in the book was just so interesting! I really enjoyed those parts. However the story has also gotten the three mean girls, love interests and the grumpy old lady who turns out to be a sweet heart in the end. So I would say that it is very cliche too.

Amal as a character was very well written for most parts, she was funny, caring and moody, like most teenagers, but some of the characters and the dialogues just felt unnatural. Amal’s group of friends just felt weird and as a teenager myself, the characters didn’t act like teenagers. I liked the bonds between the characters and their development but they just didn’t seem realistic, which is something I think is of great importance. If a character isn’t believable it affects the whole story negatively.

A touchy topic that was brought up in the book was Simone’s issue with her body image and food. She talked about wishing that she had an eating disorder and I think that those phrases isn’t something you should throw around just like that. I didn’t feel like she got the help she needed in the end, which I think would have been important as many struggle with eating disorders, and seeing that help is available is really important. In the back of the book there were also no eating disorder awareness resources, which is extremely bad as one of the characters struggles with disordered eating.

Simone says things like: “Being fat is what stinks” (page 229), and the only reason why she quit smoking in the end was because Josh didn’t like it! I think it’s great that she quit smoking in order to lose weigh but that should be the reason. She should’ve done it because she tried to recover or something. Usually you have to save yourself when it comes to the demons within you, so I think it’s wrong to teach kids that a boy will be the one who helps you because that’s not how it often works in real life. You have to be there and stand up for yourself. This part about the book really disappointed me and also upset me.

The book was written out of Amal’s point of view, but didn’t just follow her story, but her friends too. I think that this was really skillfully done by the author, as it can be hard to tell someone else’s story from another character’s point of view. The story was set in Australia, somewhere around Melbourne, in 2005-ish.

I do recommend this book for younger readers, I’m 17 right now so, if you are 13 or younger I think this book would be great for you! It’s gotten all the high school drama but also really interesting parts with faith and religion.