Sharjah: Sharjah Children’s Reading Festival (SCRF), scheduled for April 17 to 27, will feature a record 33 authors, including best-selling authors, from 18 countries, organisers announced on Friday.
The 11th annual edition of SCRF, organised by Sharjah Book Authority (SBA), will be held at Expo Centre Sharjah.
Visiting authors include Elisabetta Dami, international best-selling children’s author from Italy, whose adventure stories featuring Geronimo Stilton — the mouse — have been translated into more than 40 languages and sold over 180 million copies worldwide.
Also coming is New York Times best-seller Carole Boston Weatherford, the African-American writer with 50-plus titles under her belt, including three Caldecott Honour winners.
Shannon and Dean Hale, the New York Times best-selling wife-and-husband duo that created the ‘Princess in Black’ series, are among key guests at SCRF 2019.
Also part of the large group of US authors participating in the festival is Stephen Ritz, an internationally acclaimed, award-winning educator and author of best-selling book, ‘The Power of A Plant’.
The line-up from the UK includes Zanib Mian whose work ‘Planet Omar: Accidental Trouble Magnet’ has featured on BBC’s CBeebies Bedtime Stories and The Guardian; Sonya Saidman, who is credited for a decade-long career in children’s property licensing and has been on Marvel’s sales and marketing team working on their biggest hits, “Spiderman”, “Iron Man” and the “Incredible Hulk”, and other authors.
Well-known names from India include Arundhati Venkatesh, one of India’s most-loved children’s author who writes about football fans and lunch box looters, tooth troubles and lie detectors. Ramendra Kumar, award-winning children’s writer with 35 books to his credit, and inspirational speaker and performance storyteller; Siddhartha Sarma, whose first teen novel The Grasshopper’s Run won the Crossword Book Award and the Sahitya Akademi Award for Children’s Literature; Andaleeb Wajid who has published 18 novels for adults, young adults and children in the last ten years; and Moin Shadab who is a renowned poet, journalist, producer, announcer and broadcaster at Sahara TV’s Alami Samay Urdu News Channel.
Coming from Pakistan are well-known radio presenter, TV and theatre artist and author Yasmin Tahir, who is the daughter of famous Urdu dramatist Syed Imtiaz Ali Taj; and Naeem Tahir who served as the CEO at the Pakistan National Council of Arts, Ministry of Culture and is widely known for his theatre, film and television acting, and as a scholar, public speaker, writer, teacher and dramatist.
