Children's Books

On Thursday we were assigned to read the two children's books, "The Day of Ahmed's Secret" and "Sami and the Time of the Troubles."  The first read through of these stories, I was impressed with them.  I thought the first story, on top of being very cute, was a good example of the way that children of the Middle East celebrate the same self-accomplishments that young children here in the US would feel proud of.  The second story was a bit darker and held a little more weight for me.  The perspective of a young child being caught in the middle of a war was somewhat startling.  However, what really contributed the stories was being able to see the pictures that went with them.  

For "The Day of Ahmed's Secret",  I found the illustrations of everyday life in a Middle Eastern big city to be intriguing.  I thought that in many ways the illustrations were a good mix of modern Middle East and the traditional and more culture focused Middle East.  We held  discussion in class about the stereotypical images that we saw within the drawings, my own opinion is that these images were not that startling.  I think sometimes we confuse what is stereotypical and what is cultural, it's a pretty fine line.  So we need to be aware that sometimes, the things that we see that we deem as stereotypical, a word which is synonymous with "bad", it's possible that we are actually seeing the truth.

"Sami and the Time of the Troubles" had a much darker theme running through it, and after seeing the artwork I thought that it was absolutely beautiful.  It retained the language of a children's story while still telling a tragic tale about a boy whose home and life were being torn apart by a war.  The most striking part to me was the picture of the two boys playing guns, as though they were preparing themselves to fight this war in the future.  The conversation that was brought up by this book was intriguing and made me feel very sad.  Also, I think the entire class was able to agree that this was a better representation of modern life in the Middle East.

Although these two novels were somewhat heavy subject material, I don't believe that they were inappropriate for children because they relate to issues that Middle Eastern children are facing.  Children's books do not have to be light and fluffy to convey a relevant message to their target audience, and their audience does not have to be strictly children.  We have children's books here in America that deal with divorce, death, being an outcast, many topics that would not normally be considered "child friendly."  A good point came up during our class discussion, that children understand more than we think they do, and  just might perceive things more clearly than adults can through their carefully monitored social lenses.