{"id":4636,"date":"2018-04-14T09:00:28","date_gmt":"2018-04-14T16:00:28","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/pasadena-library.net\/teens\/?p=4636"},"modified":"2018-04-13T14:15:49","modified_gmt":"2018-04-13T21:15:49","slug":"that-thing-we-call-a-heart-teen-review","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/pasadena-library.net\/teens\/2018\/that-thing-we-call-a-heart-teen-review\/","title":{"rendered":"That Thing We Call a Heart — Teen Review"},"content":{"rendered":"

review by\u00a0Sylvie Bower, age 16<\/p>\n

That Thing We Call a Heart\u00a0<\/strong><\/em>by\u00a0Sheba Karim<\/h3>\n

\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0<\/span>That Thing We Call a Heart<\/i><\/b> is the story of Shabnam, a Pakistani-American girl, during her last summer in New Jersey before going to Penn. She isn\u2019t speaking to her best friend, who\u2019s recently started wearing a hijab, and is trapped by a lie she told about what happened to her family in the Partition. Everything changes when she meets Jamie at her new job selling pies in the park, and over some delicious pies and Urdu poetry, she falls in love. However, this isn\u2019t really a love story, as over the course of the book Sheba Karim explores what it means to be Muslim and a woman, what really happened during the Partition, and the importance of all relationships, not just romantic ones. <\/span>
\n<\/span> \u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0I absolutely adored this book. Shabnam\u2019s narration is hilarious, and provides a welcome contrast to the image of Muslims that we usually think of. Shabnam is not particularly religious, while her best friend, Farah, wears a hijab and goes to mosque regularly. However, even Farah isn\u2019t how we would define a \u201ctraditional Muslim\u201d as she wears a nontraditional hijab and smokes weed. A large part of why I loved this book is that it shows that there is no one right way to be Muslim, particularly for women who are often criticized for not being \u201cMuslim enough\u201d or being \u201ctoo Muslim.\u201d I loved Shabnam\u2019s family, even through all their faults. I loved her father, who is charmingly distracted, and whose knowledge of Urdu poetry was incredibly interesting. Even though she originally only starts to talk to her father about poetry because of a boy, by the end of the book, Shabnam comes to better understand her father, and helps him to be a better husband. Her relationship with her mother was devastating, as she never feels that she can truly open up to her, and consistently takes her for granted; but, by the end of the book, Shabnam understands and appreciates her mother a little more. Out of all her relationships, I hated the one she had with Jamie the most. He is only interested in her exoticness, and never sees her for who she is. I think that Karim did this intentionally, to show that romantic love is not the most important. The real focus of this book is on Shabnam\u2019s relationships with her family and Farah, and how she rebuilds them.<\/span>
\n<\/span> \u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0Overall, I\u2019d absolutely recommend this book, especially if you\u2019re looking for books that better capture what it means to be a Muslim. 4.5\/5 stars. <\/span><\/p>\n

\n

Find this book in our catalog: That Thing We Call a Heart<\/a><\/p>\n

Catalog Number: On Call<\/p>\n

275 pages<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

review by\u00a0Sylvie Bower, age 16 That Thing We Call a Heart\u00a0by\u00a0Sheba Karim \u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0That Thing We Call a Heart is the story of Shabnam, a Pakistani-American girl, during her last summer in New Jersey before going to Penn. She isn\u2019t speaking to her best friend, who\u2019s recently started wearing a hijab, […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":34,"featured_media":4637,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[120,54],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-4636","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-book-reviews","category-teen-reviews"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"http:\/\/pasadena-library.net\/teens\/wp-content\/blogs.dir\/18\/files\/sites\/18\/2018\/04\/that-thing-we-call-a-heart.jpg","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p5ZwbD-1cM","jetpack-related-posts":[{"id":4664,"url":"http:\/\/pasadena-library.net\/teens\/2018\/that-thing-we-call-a-heart-teen-review-2\/","url_meta":{"origin":4636,"position":0},"title":"That Thing We Call a Heart — Teen Review","author":"Teen Blogger","date":"June 2, 2018","format":false,"excerpt":"review by\u00a0John Chon, age 15 That Thing We Call a Heart\u00a0by\u00a0Sheba Karim \u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0That Thing We Call a Heart by Sheba Karim is an interesting novel about the modern Muslim family. Not most teen books are about this topic. This book does a fair job with it, balancing it out with\u2026","rel":"","context":"In "Book Reviews"","block_context":{"text":"Book Reviews","link":"http:\/\/pasadena-library.net\/teens\/category\/teen-reviews\/book-reviews\/"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/pasadena-library.net\/teens\/wp-content\/blogs.dir\/18\/files\/sites\/18\/2018\/06\/that-thing-we-call-a-heart.jpg?resize=350%2C200","width":350,"height":200},"classes":[]},{"id":6724,"url":"http:\/\/pasadena-library.net\/teens\/2022\/the-marvelous-mirza-girls-teen-book-review\/","url_meta":{"origin":4636,"position":1},"title":"The Marvelous Mirza Girls \u2014 Teen Book Review","author":"Teen Blogger","date":"January 22, 2022","format":false,"excerpt":"Review by Cadence Chen, 17 The Marvelous Mirza Girls\u00a0By Sheba Karim Noreen is a teenager haunted by grief due to her aunt\u2019s recent death. 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But Nico can never admit what she herself feels: relief at finally being free of Sarah's daily cruelties. 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