My Name Was Hussein

My Name was Hussein, by Hristo Kyuchukov, is about a boy who lives in a village in Bulgaria. Hussein was from India. His family is Muslim so they celebrate many holidays. One of the holidays is Ramadan, when they don't eat for a month. The dad goes to mosque/church and brings them candies when he comes back from mosque. For a different holiday women paint their hands and men buy new clothing. In Arabic Hussein means handsome. His grandfather was named Hussein and his great grandfather was named Hussein too. Then one weird day soldiers came with guns. They were surrounded. The rules had changed. They couldn't speak their language and they couldn't go with their relatives. It was Ramadan again. They couldn't go with their grandparents. The mother didn't let Hussein go because the mother was terrified of the soldiers. On Ramadan they couldn't go to mosque because the soldiers would let them go pray. Hussein's father wasn't able to go to the shops to buy clothes. Soldiers came to Hussein's house. They had ordered them to go to the mayor's office. A policeman slashed their identity cards and told them to change their names to Christian names. Now Hussein's name is Harry and he got a new identity card. Hussein's family didn't like their new names. The rules in Bulgaria were unfair to Hussein's family. In one of the holidays that Hussein celebrates they couldn't buy new clothes. In a different holiday they couldn't visit their grand parents. The dad couldn't go to church because the soldiers didn't let him go in the church. The rules were unfair to his family because he had to change his name and didn't like it. The lesson I learned from this was don't try to change anyone. I would feel miserable if they changed my name. By Luis

I had chosen this book because I thought, with its simple sentence structure and vocabulary, it would be a good starting point to learn about the Roma people and Eastern Europe - subjects my young daughter was not yet exposed to. However, as we read it, I did not expect the simple words of the child narrator to be so powerful. I was horrified to learn for the first time of the persecution of the Muslim Roma during the communist take-over of Bulgaria, an event that I was shamefully ignorant of until reading this book. As we finished reading, I felt tears in my eyes when my daughter solemnly asked me, "Mama, why do people do mean things?"

This is an important book for any young child's library. It raises the frightening, but very real issues of racism and given the world we live in today, where Muslims are often discrminated against or simply misunderstood to the point where it is racism, this book helps raise those issues. More imoprtantly, the actualy story is nicely written and the illustrations are beautiful.

Not many books move me and certainly not very many children's books move me, but when iread this to my kids i nearly started crying. The kids handled it much better than i. A very good book to introduce your children to the hardships of persecution and prejudice.

My Name Was Hussein is a sincerely written book that is valuable for both children and adults. It is a true story based on the author's life. The author's name was Hussein until the government in his country, (Bulgaria) forced his Muslim family and all non-ethnic Bulgarians to take Christian names. The book presents the persecution of minorities in terms that hold meaning for children, ie. Hussein and his family cannot visit other relatives or visit the mosque, his father does not seem happy anymore, and his family cannot celebrate their holidays. Hussein's name which means "handsome" in Arabic defines him and gives him his history and culture.The book captures the sadness and helplessness of an innocent child, who without his name has lost something real.