Now I'm not the Muslim, I'm just a Muslim, and there are hijabis everywhere." Fahmy's winsome artwork is the perfect accompaniment to her wry reflections. It was all I had that set me apart, and I let it become my whole personality. "At least in middle school I wasn't invisible," Huda frets. (whom Fahmy explains is a loosely fictionalized version of her teenage self) finds herself going to school with other Muslims for the first time. When her parents decide to move to a city with "more community," protagonist Huda F. Here, though, her focus isn't on what makes Muslims different - or seemingly different - from non-Muslims, but on the struggle for self-definition that all teen girls face. Like its predecessors, Huda F explores the quirks of American Muslim life with an unerring eye for humorous detail and an occasional dose of exasperation. Huda F Are You? is a fitting addition to a body of work that includes Yes, I'm Hot in This: The Hilarious Truth About Life in a Hijab and That Can Be Arranged: A Muslim Love Story. The offbeat charisma that makes Huda Fahmy irresistible is evident in the title of her first book aimed at teens. McDonald's story is a reminder of just how tempting, terrifying, and even otherworldly the future can seem when you're in high school. When Carmen tells Andrea, "There's nothing worse than being trapped in a dull, lifeless place," Andrea agrees instantly. Also romantic and melancholy is Andrea's mysterious new friend Carmen, who echoes Andrea's fears and frustrations with uncanny accuracy. It's the palette of teenage dreams, simultaneously romantic and melancholy. The book's full-color pages are drenched in lush yet downbeat purples, pinks and blues. Pimienta's moody artwork infuses McDonald's story with vitality. When Andrea meets a real spirit, the girls must draw on their ingenuity and their deepest values to avoid being tricked into a fatal bargain.
There's not much else to inspire the teens' imaginations, so they explore the hulking wrecks and dream of getting out. In Andrea and Darra's town, the departure of cornerstone industries has left behind skeletons of once-busy factories. McDonald's tale blends elements of realism and fantasy into a distinctly modern take on the supernatural. Stars, Hide Your Fire by Kel McDonald and Jose Pimienta Glock struggled to achieve normalcy in a world whose dangers were all too real. Most teenagers infuse their lives with an outsized sense of drama. Her simple, unassuming drawings heighten the sense of disconnection. Glock's story of growing up in the shadow of her parents' espionage seems almost too remarkable to be believed, even interspersed with the normal travails of a teen girl. In this graphical memoir, Glock reveals to the world what "the secret" was: Her parents were spies for the CIA. I feel terrible about telling the secret." "But this guy at school kept pestering me about your jobs, and I got so frustrated I just told. "I'm not sure how I messed up so bad," Sophia's sister writes in Passport. There was the letter Sophia's sister wrote to her parents from college, which Sophia read when her mother wasn't looking.
There were her father's mysterious trips away from home at night, which he explained as going "to see a man about a horse." There were the family's abrupt, secretive moves, often from one country to another. For Sophia Glock, these coming-of-age milestones were mixed with a number of decidedly uncommon happenings. Most Young Adult books grapple with the familiar dilemmas of teenage-hood: making friends and losing them, figuring out what's cool this week, managing to exchange a few words with your crush without totally embarrassing yourself. Their protagonists' adventures may be wildly diverse, but they illustrate the broad relevance of teen experience – whatever your age.
Though their settings range - from a post-industrial Massachusetts town to a series of deliberately unnamed cities in Central America - Sophia Glock's Passport, Huda Fahmy's Huda F Are You? and Kel McDonald and Jose Pimienta's Stars, Hide Your Fire express similar cares and concerns. Among the flood of titles competing for youthful eyeballs, though, a few stand apart this fall for their unorthodox stories, deft artwork and potent themes. It's evident that 2021 has been a bumper year for graphic novels aimed at the high-school set.