As Ahmed drives a donkey cart through busy streets and delivers heavy canisters filled with butane gas, he thinks of his father's advice: "Hurry to grow strong...But do not hurry to grow old." Contemporary Cairo is the setting for a young "butagaz boy" to tell the story of the day on which he tells his family he learned to write his own name. Well patterned sentences shaped into a wonderfully paced narrative are extended with full-color watercolor illustrations detailing cultural information. (Ages 5-9)