In Does My Head Look Big In This?, the central character Amal goes through some difficult experiences growing up. What did you find hardest about being a teenager?

Body image issues. Trying to fit into the magazine ideal of feminine beauty. I hated the fact that a pimple or extra couple of kilos could make or ruin a person. That kind of stress was hard enough. But on top of that I also had to cope with the challenge of growing up Muslim in a society which misunderstands Islam so much.

Amal learns to cope with the prejudice and racism she experiences for being a Muslim by being quick witted and smart. Was this something you also had to cope with and if so, how did you deal with it?

Yes most certainly. I dealt with it by learning to control my temper when I was faced with a racist taunt and to build my own inner strength and confidence so that I wouldn’t feel undermined if other people misjudged me. I used the negative to empower me.

Amal has some great friends at school but also experiences problems that will be familiar to every teenage girl, including a massive crush on a gorgeous boy! What was school like for you? Did you draw from your own experience when writing about Amal?

School was great. Some of my best friends were boys and we remain friends until this day. I always felt like the boys were brothers to me. Attending an Islamic school, the bond between the guys and girls was strong and almost like a family.

As for Amal, when writing about her crush on Adam I stepped back into memory lane and drew on my own feelings when I had a massive crush on a guy at school.

You're a writer, a lawyer and a mother – you must be very busy! What's a typical day for you?

A typical day for me is jamming 48 hours into 24. But I love all my roles so it’s a pleasure! When writing I have my baby in a rocker under the desk. I type away and rock her to sleep with my foot! It doesn’t always work though and I have to leave a scene midway to feed her.

Were any authors or books particularly inspirational to you?

Looking for Alibrandi by Melina Marchetta was a great inspiration.

And finally...we've heard you're a chocoholic! What's your favorite kind?

Dark chocolate with almonds. YUM AND OH SO OFF LIMITS!

This interview has been provided by Scholastic Inc.

Lisa Ann Sandell is the author of The Weight of the Sky, a young adult anthology, entitled "See Me;" and most recently, Song of the Sparrow, a novel in verse that retells the story of King Arthur and the Lady of Shalott. She is also a children's book editor.


EXCERPT
It hit me when I was power walking on the treadmill at home, watching a Friends rerun for about the ninetieth time.

It’s that scene when Jennifer Aniston is dressed in a hideous bridesmaid’s outfit at her ex’s wedding. Everyone’s making fun of her and she wants to run away and hide. Then she suddenly gets the guts to jump onstage and sing some song called “Copacabana,” whatever that means. I’m telling you, this rush of absolute power and conviction surged through me. I pressed the emergency stop button and stood in my Adidas shorts and Winnie-the-Pooh T-shirt, utterly captivated by that scene. It was like stepping out of one room, closing the door behind me, and stepping into another. One minute it was the last thing on my mind. The next minute this courage flowed through me and it just felt unbelievably right.

I was ready to wear the hijab.

That’s right. Rachel from Friends inspired me. The sheikhs will be holding emergency conferences.

That was at four-thirty yesterday afternoon. It’s now three-twenty in the morning and I’m lying in bed trying to figure out if I’m really ready to go ahead with my decision as I watch a guy on television try to persuade me that for forty-nine dollars and ninety-nine cents I can buy a can opener that will also slice a watermelon and probably pluck my eyebrows.

I can’t sleep from stressing about whether I’ve got the guts to do it. To wear the hijab, the head scarf, full-time. “Full-timers” are what my Muslim friends and I call girls who wear the hijab all the time, which basically means wearing it whenever you’re in the presence of males who aren’t immediate family. “Part-timers” like me wear the hijab as part of our uniform at an Islamic school or when we go to the mosque or maybe even when we’re having a bad hair day.

I’ve got four days left of my winter break. Four days to decide whether I’m going to actually start my third term at McCleans Preparatory School as a full-timer. You should know that right now the thought of stepping into my homeroom with the hijab on is making my nostril hair stand on end.

At this stage you should probably also know that my name is Amal Mohamed Nasrullah Abdel-Hakim. You can thank my father, paternal grandfather, and paternal great-grandfather for that one. The teachers labeled me slow in preschool because I was the last child to learn how to spell her name.

My dad’s a doctor and my mom’s a dentist. Two major nerds who fell in love during their hibernations in Monash University medical library. They were both born in Bethlehem, but there are fifty-two years of Australian citizenship between them.

My 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. He fails to remember that he has a receding hairline and Italian opera or Palestinian folk songs blasting from his car stereo system. My mom’s name is Jamila, which means beautiful in Arabic. She’s loud and energetic, loves to laugh, and is neurotically clean. The type who polishes doorknobs and dusts extension cords. Who actually has a spotless laundry room (even the cabinet under the sink) and folds back toilet-paper rolls into a pretty triangle even when we don’t have guests. What did I tell you? Neurotic.

Apart from our daily clashes over the state of my bedroom and the million and one insane chores she puts my dad and me up to (he has to climb up the ladder and wipe nonexistent dust off the lightbulbs every month), I’m afraid I can’t say (and I really am quite embarrassed about this) that we have the typical motherñteenage daughter hateñhate relationship. We actually do the whole bonding-while-shopping-together thing and I can talk to her about personal stuff and gang up on my dad with her. I suppose our relationship detracts from the whole point of my being a teenager, but at least I can say there are always ways to provoke her into an argument (leave microscopic crumbs on the kitchen counter, a towel on the bathroom floor, an insect screen open). This allows me to let off some steam and indulge in blaming my mom for every problem confronting me in my life. After all, it’s a rule: Every teenager should have the chance to say “you’re ≠ruining my life” to their mother at least four times a week.

As for my dad, I just need to hint that I’m experiencing “cramps” or a “girl problem” and I can get my way. Dad says I shouldn’t watch Sex and the City because it corrupts my mind. I respond, in a weary I-need-sympathy tone of voice, that I have bad cramps and would he mind getting me a Motrin as I am incapable of moving from the couch. He forgets about the program and goes to talk to my mother. This buys me some time to see whether Samantha picks up the mailman. See, you just need to develop a system to manage parents.

Did I mention my mom’s obsessed with diets? (Or, as she calls it, “achieving the healthy lifestyle.”) My lunch box in elementary school was filled with 97% fat-free yogurt bars and containers of oil-free tabouleh. Oil-free tabouleh is basically wheat with parsley. Gross. I suspect she had me intravenously drinking wheatgrass juice when I was a fetus. My mom’s been trying to lose twenty pounds for the past ten years. My dad gets dragged through every phase: the Eight-Day Banana Diet, the Soup Diet, the Low-Carb Diet, the High-Carb Diet; she even made him go to her Weight Watchers meeting. After one attendance my dad swore he would never return. Apparently the discussion topic was “how to cope with partners who jeopardize your weight-loss efforts.”

At the moment she’s walking around the block after dinner with my dad. She’s been trying to get me to join them but there’s a fat chance I’m going to be seen with two middle-aged power-walkers in matching fluorescent parachute tracksuits puffing along Riversdale Road.

We live in Camberwell, one of Melbourne’s trendy suburbs. Beautiful treelined streets, Federation homes, manicured front lawns, and winding driveways. We moved here last year because my dad started working at a clinic in a nearby suburb, and my mom wanted to live a little closer to the city. Before that we lived in Donvale, a very leafy, hilly suburb with lots of acreage and owls hooting at night. There were a lot more Aussies with ethnic backgrounds there, so being a Muslim family wasn’t such a big deal. In Donvale our street was a cocktail. There were the Chongs, the Papadopoulouses, the Wilsons, the Slaviks, the Xiangs, and us, the Abdel-Hakims.

Our street in Camberwell is different. We’ve got the Taylors, the Johns, and Mrs. Vaselli. Don’t have a clue who the rest are. Everybody pretty much keeps to themselves.

I’m an Australian-Muslim-Palestinian. That means I was born an Aussie and whacked with some seriously confusing identity hyphens. I’m in eleventh grade and in four days’ time I’ll be entering the first day of my third term at McCleans. My Jennifer Aniston experience couldn’t have come at a worse time. I mean, it’s hard enough being an Arab Muslim at a new school with your hair tumbling down your shoulders. Shawling up is just plain psychotic.

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