Does My Head Look Big in This?; The Seeing Stone; and Lucinda's Secret

Does My Head Look Big in This? by Randa Abdel-Fattah, 2005
Amal, a high-schooler in Australia, decides over school break to start wearing the hijab full-time when she returns to school. The first part deals with the consequences of this decision and the reactions of people around her. The second half gets into her relationships with two sets of friends, one from her former Muslim school and the other from her current private prep school. Her current friends stick by her, though she has a rough time when her guy friends wants to kiss and she refuses. One of her Muslim friends comes from a very repressive, conservative family and is being constantly pressured to marry already. It is this second half that was most interesting to me. I think it captures how it must feel to be under the veil and confronting others’ reactions on a daily basis.

Some memory-jogging tags: Islam, fiction. Hijab, Islamic clothing. Friendship. Oppression. Stereotypes. Religious differences. Religious tolerance. Religion vs culture.

MS Rating: Great. It’s a good cross-cultural read.


The Seeing Stone and Lucinda’s Secret (Spiderwick Chronicles, bk 2 and bk 3) by Tony DiTerrlizzi, 2003
When Simon is looking for his missing cat, he is taken as well. Jared sees the goblins through an eyepiece that Thimbletack helps him find. When Thimbletack starts giving riddles as the price for the eyepiece, Jared takes it by force and he and Mallory go after Simon. They first find fairies who like to trick them and a troll who wants to eat them, but finally stumble upon the goblins around a camp fire eating something that looks a lot like a cat. Several cages are hanging from the trees, one containing Simon and another containing Hogsqueal, a goblin that uses baby teeth instead of animals’ and helps them escape. Jared tricks the goblins into following them toward the troll, who lets the children go and feasts on the goblins instead.

In the next book, the Grace children visit Aunt Lucinda who’s living in an asylum. Aunt Lucinda is the daughter of Arthur Spiderwick, the author of the field guide, and has been committed by her cousin, the Grace children’s grandmother, because of her refusal to eat and bad cuts down her arms. But the children know she is not crazy, just aware of and abused by the fairies and goblins who are after the field guide. They learn from her that the magical creatures want the book. Since Thimbletack has stolen the book, the children snoop around the library, looking for a clue of how to proceed, when they find a map with a long-ago meeting noted on it. They wonder if Arthur didn’t leave his family on purpose, but was somehow forced to because of this meeting. They follow the map and end up in a conference with elves, who indeed want the book and try to trap one of the boys as a ransom until they receive the book. Jared’s quick thinking saved them again, as he tricks the elves into swearing an oath to let the trapped boy go.

Books Two and Three of the Spiderwick Chronicles read just as fast and fun as the first.

MS Rating: Great. Good books for comic-book readers.