Assmaa A. Andulsi: The Girl Who is Like No Other is about a modern Muslim American girl. Assmaa thinks she should be more famous than Snow White, Princess Aurora or Cinderella.
Everywhere she goes, she carries two sets of herself. One writes in English from left to right while the other writes in Arabic from right to left. One goes to public school during the week, and the other attends Sunday school at the mosque.
One admires George Washington and Martin Luther King while the other loves the Prophet Mohamed. These two identities make her different, special, and a girl who is like no other.
Sometimes she struggles to understand others. When she yells at her third-grade teacher for not fasting during Ramadan, super-duper trouble follows. Her mother explains that since her teacher is Christian, she doesn’t fast. Since Assmaa didn’t know how other people live and believe, others probably don’t know much about how her family lives and believes.
She sets up a food drive to teach her fellow students about an important principle called zakat, the act of giving. The story briefly introduces readers to all five pillars of Islam: salat, or prayer; sawm, or fasting; zakat, charitable giving; hajj, the pilgrimage to Mecca; and shahada, the declaration of faith.
