Does My Head Look Big in This?
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| Does My Head Look Big In This? | |
| Author | Randa Abdel-Fattah |
|---|---|
| Country | Australia |
| Language | English |
| Genre(s) | Children's literature |
| Publisher | Pan Macmillan Australia Pty Ltd |
| Publication date | 1 August 2005 |
| Media type | Print Paperback |
| Pages | 348 |
| ISBN | ISBN 0439919479 |
Does My Head Look Big In This? is the first novel by author Randa Abdel-Fattah. It was released in Australia, by Pan MacMillan Australia, on the 1st August 2005. It won the Australian Book Industry Award for Australian Book of The Year Award for older children.[1]
The plot involves a sixteen-year-old girl who decides to adopt the Muslim custom of hijab dress, with varying reactions from her family and peers.
[edit] Character Profile Of Amal Abdel-Hakim
Amal Mohamed Nasrullah Abdel-Hakim is a sixteen year-old Australian-Palestinian-Muslim girl living in Melbourne with her mum and dad. She has brown eyes, brown hair and is average weight and height. Her dad’s name is Mohamed, he drives a metallic-red convertible because he’s under the misguided delusion that he’s still young and cool and he fails to remember that he has a receding hairline and has Italian opera or ‘Palestinian Folk’ songs blasting from his car stereo system. Her mum’s name is Jamila, which means beautiful in Arabic. She’s loud and energetic, loves to laugh, and is neurotically clean.
She has a strong debating side of her personality with a value of doing what’s right and what will make everyone happy, she also has a strong value for her religion and what she believes in. One of her weaknesses would be a common one among a lot of caring people around the world; she doesn’t want to see her friends get hurt. Another one would be when her emotions clash with her religion, like how she has feelings for Adam.
Some of the important things in her life would be: friendship, religion, family, education, having fun, future and her values. When she completes year 12, Amal is hoping to go to law school and learn how to be a professional lawyer.
Amal likes her friends (Simone and Leila) and values their friendship a lot, she likes debating at school and also likes having fun. Amal dislikes three stuck up girls at McCleans Grammar School; Tia Tamos, Claire Foster and Rita Mason. She dislikes the fact that she can’t have a boyfriend, but is still satisfied with the relationship she has with Adam, the boy she has a crush on, which is friendship. She also dislikes how Leila’s mum treats Leila compared to her brother. Her religion is Islam; she has a lot of respect for her religion and thinks highly of it. At the start of the text, Amal makes a choice which involved wearing the hijab all the time (she and her Muslim friends refer to this as going ‘Full-Time’). After three days of thinking about this decision, she decides to go ahead with it and wear the hijab full-time.
Near the beginning of the text, Amal talks about Adam as her friend. Towards the end of the text she finds out that Adam in facts likes her and he tries to kiss her at his birthday party, but instead of following her heart she follows she head and her religion. Amal is a good friend to most people in the text accept for those three stuck up girls. At a venerable moment in the toilets, Amal runs into Tia, Claire and Rita, after a little ‘bitchy’ talk about everything wrong with Amal. The relationship between these three girls and Amal is everything but friendly. It is a story about a young girl's hardships as she must learn to let go of her feelings for Adam and get on with her life.
