By:
On:
In: General Book Reviews, Multicultural (YA), Realistic Fiction (YA), Romance (YA), Young Adult Book Reviews
With: 0 Comments

Guilt is the glue that keeps Rana’s immigrant family together. In the Muslim world that Rana is from, the goal is to become a dutiful wife. However, that is a version of womanhood that Rana can’t live up to. She’s gay but keeps her sexual identity secret. Because she’s suffering from the loss of one of her best friends, Louie who died a mysterious death, Rana quits basketball and carbo loads her pain. As she shrinks into herself, her teacher Ms. Murillo tries to draw her out, telling her that her opinion matters and offering her meditation as a way to open up to possibility:Read More →

By:
On:
In: Action & Adventure, General Book Reviews, Middle Grade Reviews, Multicultural, Sci Fi & Fantasy
With: 0 Comments

In writing Hamra and the Jungle of Memories, Hanna Alkaf begins in the fashion of a traditional fairy tale. In her reimagining of Little Red Riding Hood, Alkaf borrows heavily from the Malaysian Muslim culture and weaves her magical retelling with Malay customs and cuisine. The star of this tale is thirteen-year-old Hamra, who is stubborn, sad, rebellious, and angry. She is tired of wiping up messes and cooking and listening to her grandmother say things that don’t’ make sense now that she is living with dementia. Hamra is tired of always having to be nice and good and polite and responsible. And she isRead More →

By:
On:
In: General Book Reviews, Middle Grade Reviews, Multicultural, Realistic Fiction, Sports
With: 0 Comments

Shaheer Atique is afraid of getting attached to a place because it always ends up in the rearview mirror. His highly talented and ambitious father chases hospital jobs, so Shaheer and his grandfather are always on the move. The trio’s latest stop is Virginia. When quiet and withdrawn Shaheer attends the first day of eighth grade, he encounters several people who tease him, laughing at his hair, which “must be a wig.” Before long, he realizes he is a doppelgänger for Ashar Malik, a defense man on the hockey team. Ashar’s dream is to use his position on The Husky Bladers to get noticed andRead More →

By:
On:
In: General Book Reviews, Historical Fiction, Middle Grade Reviews, Multicultural, Realistic Fiction
With: 0 Comments

With the twentieth anniversary of 9/11 having recently been commemorated, we all might wonder whether we have progressed as a nation in the last two decades. We might ask ourselves if we treat others better today than we did in the days and months after the attacks. Because today’s school age youth were not yet alive in 2001, they may wonder why September 11 carries the motto, Never Forget. They may wonder why history is so important.  Saadia Faruqi’s novel Yusuf Azeem Is Not a Hero will guide middle grade readers to understand these complicated questions with their layered answers. Readers will learn that historyRead More →

By:
On:
In: Multicultural (YA), Realistic Fiction (YA), Romance (YA), Young Adult Book Reviews
With: 0 Comments

We humans are social creatures, highly gregarious and communicative. We are wired to be open to the world, so I am always shocked when I encounter intolerance, blatant displays of ignorance, or various other forms of hate. Life just seems too complicated as it is to add to the challenges with human pettiness. This is the frustration in which seventeen-year-old Shadi Nasreen navigates two years after the 9/11 attacks.  She is a Persian girl who detests the posturing of people trying to prove piety in the face of persecution and despises the bullying she must endure because she wears the face of the enemy. InRead More →

By:
On:
In: Multicultural (YA), Realistic Fiction (YA), Young Adult Book Reviews
With: 0 Comments

Readers of Zara Hossain Is Here accompany driven, intelligent, community-minded social justice advocate, Zara Hossain on her mission to bring awareness to the sacrifices and struggles that immigrants face in the United States. In response, I vacillated between tears, anger at the injustice that brown, non-gender conforming individuals endure, and the occasional sense that some generalizing was taking place under the influence of Sabina Khan’s pen. Without wanting to minimize the challenges faced on a daily basis by someone who experiences otherness, I—a white, heterosexual, cisgender female—couldn’t help but say, “I don’t belong to that hate group, and I am always appalled that people’s coreRead More →

By:
On:
In: Multicultural (YA), Realistic Fiction (YA), Romance (YA), Young Adult Book Reviews
With: 0 Comments

Fluent in the language of vectors and the laws of physics, Rukhsana Ali dreams of one day working at NASA and plans to attend Caltech when she graduates from high school.  She also can’t wait to escape her home in Seattle where her Muslim parents believe that daughters and sons are not the same. In her mother’s mind, Rukshana’s worth in the marriage market is directly proportionate to her culinary prowess.  Therefore, she has to know how to prepare chai, goat vindaloo, and roti  in order to impress a potential mother-in-law.  But Rukshana isn’t a traditional Muslim, and she’s more interested in Ariana’s sweet-nothings whisperedRead More →