SHARJAH – Young children let their imaginations run wild when they attended an interactive session on the second day of the Sharjah Children’s Reading Festival, which runs until April 28 at Expo Centre Sharjah.
When Matt Robertson, author, and illustrator of children’s books, read out his first story on superheroes, “Super Stan”, to a group of children, it quickly drew their attention.
From Superman to Spiderman, the children, aged six to 10, excitedly shouted out their favorite superhero’s name, before they listened with great interest to Robertson’s story lesson. “The moral is you don’t have to have superpowers to be special,” he told the children. “Just by being kind and helping your brother, sister or friend, you can be super.”
The hour-long Create Your Own Character session was part of the 10th edition of the festival, themed ‘Your Future… Just a Book Away’.
The children cheered as Robertson introduced his next story, FluffyWuffy. Once complete, the children were given the chance to create a new character.
The children were eager to start, jumping and cheering about what features their character should have. Following their requests, Robertson created a girl, with long straight hair and “super-pants”. His character was able to fly, run fast, help others, be kind and have magic skills. The children filled the room with energy, standing and screaming out potential superhero names, before deciding on Super Lisa.
Robertson said, in many cases, people tend to forget the importance of creativity when a child reaches a certain age. Encouraging it from a certain age would make children take it forward into adulthood and into their professional career. “It just makes you think of things differently and think outside the box rather than thinking down a straight line,” he added.
The festival’s events span several programmes, under the main themes of Kids Activities, Cultural Programmes, Cultural Café, Kids’ Creative Café, Social Media Café and Cookery Corner. SCRF 2018 also features a series of international theatrical performances like ‘Tuta and Monkey Cheetah’, and the ‘Island of Kids’ Area’ that combine education, fun, and entertainment to highlight the values of honesty to young visitors.
A prime highlight of the festival this year is its first ever 3D Book Exhibition, featuring 250 pop-up books from the 3D Book Centre in Forli, Italy. The books have been handpicked by the exhibition curators to represent eight different periods of time. One of SCRF’s mainstays, the Sharjah Exhibition for Children’s Books Illustrations, is featuring 355 artworks by 104 illustrators from 32 countries this year.
–PR
