Books about North American Muslim life are badly needed, but this short novel is too pedantic, albeit well-meaning, to...
Farah, a fifth-grade student of Indian Muslim origins at a fancy girls’ school in Los Angeles, must bring in something representing her mom for International Women’s Day, but the usually creative student can’t imagine what would impress her classmates.
When her mother finds her looking through her closet, Farah feels guilty, but her mother reveals that she herself has a secret. Widowed a few years before, Farah’s mom is opening “The Hijab Boutique,” a store selling Muslim headscarves. Farah finds a topic for her speech, and her mom makes a new start. Some explanations of Islamic practice are woven into the novella, particularly a discussion of why some women wear the hijab. The contemporary story has subplots concerning friendship and cliques, but the leaden prose will limit readership. Narrator Farah reflects on her father’s gold convertible: “I find the courage to stare at the symbolic fruit of his hard work.” In the final chapter, “Conclusion,” Farah too quickly tells readers that the “Cool as Ice” girls aren’t so important, and she feels good in a new neighborhood, where she has joined the Muslim Girl Scouts and has a new friend. The realistic black-and-white pencil illustration that accompanies this summation shows her wearing a hijab.
Books about North American Muslim life are badly needed, but this short novel is too pedantic, albeit well-meaning, to appeal broadly . (Fiction. 9-11)Pub Date: Sept. 1, 2011
ISBN: 978-0-86037-468-8
Page Count: 56
Publisher: Kube Publishing
Review Posted Online: Aug. 2, 2011
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Aug. 15, 2011
The journey is even gently funny—Omakayas’s brother spends much of the year with a porcupine on his head. Charming and...
This third entry in the Birchbark House series takes Omakayas and her family west from their home on the Island of the Golden-Breasted Woodpecker, away from land the U.S. government has claimed.
Difficulties abound; the unknown landscape is fraught with danger, and they are nearing hostile Bwaanag territory. Omakayas’s family is not only close, but growing: The travelers adopt two young chimookoman (white) orphans along the way. When treachery leaves them starving and alone in a northern Minnesota winter, it will take all of their abilities and love to survive. The heartwarming account of Omakayas’s year of travel explores her changing family relationships and culminates in her first moon, the onset of puberty. It would be understandable if this darkest-yet entry in Erdrich’s response to the Little House books were touched by bitterness, yet this gladdening story details Omakayas’s coming-of-age with appealing optimism.
Pub Date: Sept. 1, 2008
ISBN: 978-0-06-029787-9
Page Count: 208
Publisher: HarperCollins
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Aug. 1, 2008
A fizzy mix of low humor and brisk action, with promise of more of both to come.
Heroic deeds await Isaac after his little sister runs into the school basement and is captured by elves.
Even though their school is a spooky old castle transplanted stone by stone from Germany, Isaac and his two friends, Max and Emma, little suspect that an entire magical kingdom lies beneath—a kingdom run by elves, policed by oversized rats in uniform, and populated by captives who start out human but undergo transformative “weirding.” These revelations await Isaac and sidekicks as they nerve themselves to trail his bossy younger sib, Lily, through a shadowy storeroom and into a tunnel, across a wide lake, and into a city lit by half-human fireflies, where they are cast together into a dungeon. Can they escape before they themselves start changing? Gibson pits his doughty rescuers against such adversaries as an elven monarch who emits truly kingly belches and a once-human jailer with a self-picking nose. Tests of mettle range from a riddle contest to a face-off with the menacing head rat Shelfliver, and a helter-skelter chase finally leads rescuers and rescued back to the aboveground. Plainly, though, there is further rescuing to be done.
A fizzy mix of low humor and brisk action, with promise of more of both to come. (Fantasy. 9-11)Pub Date: Aug. 1, 2015
ISBN: 978-1-62370-255-7
Page Count: 160
Publisher: Capstone Young Readers
Review Posted Online: June 28, 2015
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