Posted on July 29, 2008 at 12:39 am
Hi, Molly,
Thanks for commenting. I agree: in a lot of YA lit (Does My Head included), the narrators sometimes seem like adult mouthpieces. It’s hard, I think, to find those pieces of YA lit that feature those truly resonant, authentic-seeming voices.
Amy P.
Posted on February 1, 2009 at 3:44 pm
I agree with these criticisms, although what bugged me more was how one-note many of the secondary characters seemed. It was like they each had exactly one “quirk” that would come up in every single scene they were in. So, her friend who was trying to lose weight would have to have references to dieting in every single conversation. It got old.
That said, I did enjoy a lot of the book, and I also really appreciate having more lit with teen Muslim characters in these Islamophobic times. That’s also something I liked about John Green’s An Abundance of Katherines, which I also couldn’t like quite as much as I wanted to.
Posted on October 18, 2009 at 7:21 am
I really liked ‘Does my head look big in this?’Amal,Simone,Elinee,Adam and Josh are my beloved characters.I really appreciate this book as it teaches us not to bifurcate and freak out people on the basis of their religion because by doing this they are leading themselves,in some squaddie way,into bedevilment.
Posted on July 27, 2008 at 10:33 pm
I read this book after seeing you mention it on the blog, and enjoyed it quite a bit. As you said, a bit heavy-handed in places, and I thought Amal read more as an adult than a teenager, but I find that to be true in a fair amount of YA lit, and I liked her enough that it didn’t bother me.