Teen Tuesday: Huda F Cares by Huda Fahmy

Image: Penguin Random House

Huda F. Cares? by Huda Fahmy. Huda F. #2. 208 p. Dial Books for Young Readers/ Penguin Random House, October, 2023. 9780593532799. Review of finished, purchased copy.

Oops! Happy penultimate Tuesday TMS Readers! Sorry for the late posting. Appointments.

Teen Tuesday features Huda F. Cares? by Huda Fahmy. This is the second book in the Huda F series, and before you all get your panties in a twist, take a look at the author's name.

In this hilarious follow-up to Huda F are You?, Huda and her sisters are bickering non-stop despite their mother's entreaties to please get along. When their parents surprise them with a trip to Disney World, Huda and her sisters are thrilled; that is until they realize that they have to share the backseat of the minivan all the way from Dearborn, Michigan to Orlando!

As in Huda F are You?, Huda and her family are visibly Muslim. While she loves her religion, sometimes it's difficult to practice on the road. Combine those concerns with sisterly bickering and you get a thoughtful and poignant graphic novel that is utterly relatable.

Huda F Cares? was a National Book Award Finalist. It is laugh out loud funny and belongs in any library. Happy reading!

Teen Tuesday and Audiobook Review: Perfectly Parvin by Olivia Abtahi

Image: Penguin Random House

Perfectly Parvin by Olivia Abtahi. Unabridged e-audiobook, ~7 hours. Read by Mitra Jouhari. Listening Library/ Penguin Random House Audio, May, 2021. 9780593411483. (Review of e-audio downloaded from public library.)

Teen Tuesday features Perfectly Parvin by Olivia Abtahi. This breezy first-person narrative features fourteen-year-old Parvin (pronounced Par-VEEN, not Par-vin) Mohammedi, who is starting high school thinking she will rock it and is crushed when her new boyfriend dumps her at orientation because she's "too much." What does that even mean? Luckily, she has two bffs to turn to for comfort and she video chats with her college-aged aunt in Tehran, Iran regularly and her parents are supportive even if they do work long hours and don't cook much. When she spies her ex holding hands with another girl, she blurts out that she has a date for homecoming. Now all she needs to do is tone herself down and emulate all the white girls in her favorite rom-coms-be quiet and demure, not hairy and no snort-laughing. oh, yeah, and snag a date for homecoming so she can save face.

Her friends Fabian and Ruth and her aunt all tell her not to change herself-that she should be liked for who she is, but Parvin is wrestling with being bi-racial. She looks nothing like her blond, blue-eyed mother and doesn't feel Iranian enough, especially in Farsi school, where she struggles to learn the language.

Parvin is perfectly entertaining as she blunders her way through a variety of cringeworthy, yet relatable situations. Layered inside the humor are her deft observations of Islamophobia, micro-aggressions and outright racism as well as the shifting sands of high school hierarchy.

Perfectly Parvin is the author's debut and a series starter, so if you like rom-coms and irrepressible characters, you're in for a treat here. I read this one with my ears and appreciated the fluency of the narrator when pronouncing Farsi. Happy reading!

Teen Tuesday and Audiobook Review: Home is Not a Country by Safia Elhillo

Image: Penguin Random House

 Home is Not a Country by Safia Elhillo. Unabridged audiobook, ~191 minutes. Read by the author. Listening Library/ Make Me a World/ Random House Children's Books, March, 2021. 9780593343708. (Review of e-audio borrowed from public library.)

Teen Tuesday features another verse novel about the Muslim immigrant experience. In Home is Not a Country by Safia Elhillo, fourteen-year-old Nima despairs of ever fitting in and grieves for a father she never knew. Her father died in a car accident back in Sudan (presumably, it is never named) before she was born. Her mother and her best friend, both pregnant, immigrated to the U.S., where Nima and Haitham were born. They live in the same apartment building and Haitham is like a brother to Nima. He does his best to protect her from bullies, but she's constantly picked on for her religion, her skin color, and her poverty. Nima wishes her mother had stayed in Sudan and named her Yasmeen. She's convinced her life would've been different.

In fact, she believes that she glimpses Yasmeen from time to time and this is where the novel veers into magical realism. After a series of crises, Nima gets to travel the road not taken.

This was an immersive read. I'm glad I read with my ears. First, I adore listening poets read their own work. Secondly, as mentioned in Monday's post, I love hearing the foreign language words and names pronounced correctly. 

Home is Not a Country should appeal to teens who enjoy verse novels, stories of the immigrant experience and stories about finding one's place/ belonging. 

Middle Grade Monday and Audiobook Review: Unsettled by Reem Faruqi

Image: HarperCollins Publishers

Unsettled by Reem Faruqi. Unabridged e-Audiobook, ~2.5 hours. HarperAudio/ HarperCollins Publishers, May, 2021. 9780063044739. (Review of e-audiobook borrowed from public library.)

Happy Monday! I am roughly halfway through summer break and it seems to be a good time to stop and reflect. Am I having fun? Am I getting exercise? Am I getting outdoors in between all the rain we've been having? Am I reading? This has been an eventful summer for me filled with a fair amount of stress, but I am trying to get some exercise and get out of doors each day. I've been averaging seven miles a day of walking and I walk briskly enough to get my heart rate up. 

The stress has definitely impacted my reading. I'm finding it difficult to maintain concentration and even though I've read roughly a book a day this summer, I went into the break 28 books behind my GR goal and was hoping to catch up. That won't happen and that is okay.

Middle Grade Monday features Unsettled by Reem Faruqi. This blank verse novel is loosely based on the author's childhood. Nurah has a perfect life in Karachi, Pakistan. She has a best friend, lives with her beloved grandmother and gets to swim in the ocean with her brother often. One perfect day at the beach turns into Nurah's worst day when her father announced plans to move to Peachtree City, Georgia for a new job. Suddenly, Nurah's life is unsettled as she realizes that everything about her from her accented English through her clothing and brown skin makes her stick out when all she wants to do is blend in. Joining the swim team helps, but she becomes jealous of her brother's ability and seeming ease at fitting in.

This moving novel is told in verse in nine sections. Issues of racism, Islamophobia, racial profiling and friendship are explored. Back matter includes a glossary of Arabic and Urdu terms that are woven into the text, an author's note and a recipe.

The audio was well-paced. The narrator's voice sounded youthful and I appreciated her fluency with Arabic. When I read foreign language words with my eyes, I tend to butcher the pronunciation or skim right by. I know I should stop and look the words up, but I often sacrifice that in favor of staying in the flow of the book. 

Unsettled should appeal to a wide range of middle grade readers. 

Fact Friday and Arc Review: Accused: My Story of Injustice by Adama Bah

Image: Norton Young Readers

Accused: My Story of Injustice by Adama Bah, . 112 p. I, Witness series #1. Norton Young Readers, August 3, 2021. 9781324016632. (Review of arc courtesy of publisher.)

Happy penultimate Friday of the 2020 - 2021 school year! Fact Friday features Accused: My Story of Injustice by Adama Bah. This memoir is the first book of a new nonfiction series called I, Witness, aimed at a middle school audience. 

Ms. Bah was sixteen-year-old in 2005, when the Department of Homeland Security raided her apartment in Harlem. She and her father were handcuffed and arrested. They were separated and she was interrogated and eventually held for months, accused of terrorism. Eventually, she learned that an acquaintance named her as a potential suicide bomber, only to later find out that that young lady was told that Ms. Bah named her. When she was released, with a curfew and an ankle monitor, she discovered that her father had been deported and her family was starving, so she quit high school and worked five jobs to support them, but continued to suffer from the trauma as well as the fallout of being accused of terrorism. She learned she was on a "No Fly" list as she tried to board a plane with the family she was working for.

This memoir is short and simply told but really packs a punch as readers learn about the reality of Islamophobia in painful detail.

Accused will publish on August 3 along with book 2 of the series, Hurricane: My Story of Resilience by Salvadore Gomez-Colon.

Teen Tuesday and Arc Review: Zara Hossain is Here by Sabina Khan

Happy Tuesday! Spring is definitely in the air! I walked my hounds at 5:15 AM and the sky was lightening. I didn't need a hat and gloves. The sun is setting later and later. I saw a robin yesterday and a scrawny ground hog at 7AM this morning. 

Image: Scholastic Inc.

Zara Hossain is Here by Sabina Khan. 248 p. Scholastic Press/ Scholastic Inc., April 6, 202.978133858087. (Review of arc courtesy of publisher.)

Teen Tuesday features Zara Hossain is Here by Sabina Khan. Seventeen-year-old Zara Hossain moved to the U.S.with her family from Pakistan when she was two so that her physician father could finish his medical training. The hospital where he works in Texas has sponsored his green card, which the family anxiously await. 

Zara is the only Muslim at her conservative Catholic school, where she deals with microaggressions daily as well as overt racism from alpha male, Tyler Benson. She tries to fly under the radar and hasn't confronted Tyler due to her immigrant status, but one day, she spots him cornering a new classmate from Colombia and she can no longer stay silent. This selfless act sets in motion a series of events that cascade into near tragedy, prompting Zara to question whether the U.S. can really be her home.

Zara is a fierce, intelligent, articulate main character. Her parents are involved and supportive of her. This first-person narrative is hard to read at times, but equally hard to put down. Ms. Khan explores many timely issues from immigration policy through Islamophobia and homophobia. Thoughtful teen readers will have much to ponder.

The book is due to publish on April 6.