Love from A to Z
CBC Books | | Posted: January 28, 2019 5:38 PM | Last Updated: May 26, 2021
S.K. Ali
A marvel: something you find amazing. Even ordinary-amazing. Like potatoes — because they make French fries happen. Like the perfect fries Adam and his mom used to make together.
An oddity: whatever gives you pause. Like the fact that there are hateful people in the world. Like Zayneb's teacher, who won't stop reminding the class how "bad" Muslims are.
But Zayneb, the only Muslim in class, isn't bad. She's angry.
When she gets suspended for confronting her teacher, and he begins investigating her activist friends, Zayneb heads to her aunt's house in Doha, Qatar, for an early start to spring break.
Fuelled by the guilt of getting her friends in trouble, she resolves to try out a newer, "nicer" version of herself in a place where no one knows her.
Then her path crosses with Adam's.
Since he got diagnosed with multiple sclerosis in November, Adam's stopped going to classes, intent, instead, on perfecting the making of things. Intent on keeping the memory of his mom alive for his little sister.
Adam's also intent on keeping his diagnosis a secret from his grieving father.
Alone, Adam and Zayneb are playing roles for others, keeping their real thoughts locked away in their journals.
Until a marvel and an oddity occurs…
Marvel: Adam and Zayneb meeting.
Oddity: Adam and Zayneb meeting. (From Simon & Schuster)
- The CBC Books summer reading list: 33 books to check out this season
- 29 Canadian kids books & YA to look for in spring 2019
- Why S.K. Ali would dine with her character's mother
- Why S.K. Ali believes in the unlimited potential of girl power
- Why YA novelist S.K. Ali loves Flannery O'Connor's fiction
- S.K. Ali on why we need more Muslim stories
- 11 Canadian books coming out in May we can't wait to read
- 9 Canadian love stories to read this summer
- 12 great YA books to bring to the beach this summer
- 10 books for the romance lover on your holiday gift list
- The best Canadian YA and middle-grade books of 2019
- Aparita Bhandari recommends books that explore the diversity of love and romance
From the book
This is a love story.
You've been warned.
Marvel: Two Saturdays in March
On the morning of Saturday, March 14, fourteen-year-old Adam Chen went to the Museum of Islamic Art in Doha.
A thirteenth-century drawing of a tree caught his gaze. It wasn't particularly striking or artistic. He didn't know why this tree caused him to stride forward as if magnetized. (When he thinks about it now, his guess is thus: Trees were kind of missing in the landscape he found himself in at the time, and so he was hungry for them.)
Once he got close, he was rewarded with the name of the manuscript that housed this simple tree sketch: The Marvels of Creation and the Oddities of Existence.
He stood there thinking about this grand title for a long moment.
Then something clicked in his mind: Maybe that's what living is — recognizing the marvels and oddities around you.
From Love from A to Z by S.K. Ali ©2018. Published by Simon & Schuster.