Amina

April 15, 2015
Amina Khalid is a sweet, amiable teenager-and a solid counterexample to Islamophobia and negative notions about Somalis. The 14-year-old Somali Muslim teenager lives in war-fractured Mogadishu. She shares her grenade-damaged home with pregnant Khadija, elderly Ayeeyo, her older brother, Roble, and her father, political artist Samatar Khalid. Unlike the stereotypes of Muslim men oppressing Muslim women and girls, Amina's loving father and exasperated brother support the "itch in her fingertips" that "[drives] her to keep creating." Like her dad, Amina creates renegade art-not paintings on canvas like Samatar, but multimedia street art using bombed-out buildings, hoarded charcoal, poetry, cloth strips, and other pieces of her beloved metropolis. Powers' prose is honest, though descriptions of events such as giving birth as a circumcised woman, kidnappings by real-life Islamist group al-Shabab, and death are sometimes elliptically described. She leavens Amina's difficult situation with school, crushes, unexpected friendships, faith, spoken-word face-offs, and real-life context as Amina and her fellow citizens reconfigure what "normal" means for their families, city, and, by extension, country. Taken as a whole, this entry in the Through My Eyes series is solid but not gripping-and that's OK. Readers don't always need another heroine-sometimes a young woman living an ordinary life in extraordinary circumstances will wilt stereotypes better than heroics. (map, author's note, timeline, glossary, further reading) (Fiction. 13-16)

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May 15, 2015
Grades 6-8 This is the compelling fictional story of a courageous girl's life in war-torn Somalia. The country has been ravaged by civil war, and Mogadishu is under the control of al-Shabaab, a violent fundamentalist militia group with oppressive laws. Amina's father is a recognized artist whose paintings reflect the social conditions. When al-Shabaab arrests him for this reason, the family is destitute, and it falls on Amina to take care of them. She, too, is a talented artist and draws on the walls of abandoned buildings, leaving messages of resistance and hope. Amina's vulnerability and strength make her a compelling protagonist with whom readers will easily empathize. The book is rich with realistic, complex details about Islam, agency, urban life, and friendship. Amina's story is at once culturally specific, unique, and universal, so that readers from all walks of life will find moments of connection. Politically relevant, this timely story offers many opportunities for classroom discussion.(Reprinted with permission of Booklist, copyright 2015, American Library Association.)