This story was not what I had expected from a childrens story at all, with the exception of the secret itself.
Normally, chuldrens stories in American are full of fantasy creatures, both great and horrible. Take for instance the most common children stories, like cinderella and snow white. The stories both teach lessons to children, and paint pretty pictures in little kids heads while doing so.
The Day of Ahmed's Secret, however did not. It was full of words that described the Middle East, carts, donkeys, crowded streets with merchants everywhere. At first glance the class and I thought this was part of the 'Arab Land' deal, but at closer inspection we realized that was not the case. The pictures held those things, indeed, but also showed people in modern clothing, cars, and streetlamps. No fairytale dragons, though. :)
The ending was very cute, how Ahmed went through the whole day so excited to share his secret, he wanted to wait untill he had the perfect timing. The secret being that he could finally write his name brought up another discussion - one about how old the boy is, and if the reason he is so excited to write about his name could be the fact that he is much older than originally thought. I, personally, thought that Ahmed was about 8 or 9, in which case it isnt that outlandish for a worker boy to just learn his name.
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I agree about the age issue. I also assumed he was 8 or 9, so relatively young. If you haven't had the opportunity for education because you have been working...then like you said, it's not outlandish to think it is possible for him to have just learned his name. There are people in the United States that are illiterate and I would say most would react in the same way once they learned how to write their name or read their first book. I think this book represents one person rather than an entire population so its the same idea that one person here could be going through the same thing.
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