Sharjah: A colourful world of picture books, literature, arts and activities has welcomed visitors to the Sharjah Children’s Reading Festival (SCRF), which is now open at the Expo Centre Sharjah.

The 10th edition of the annual SCRF has been launched this morning by His Highness Dr Shaikh Sultan Bin Mohammad Al Qasimi, Member of the Supreme Council and Ruler of Sharjah.

Shaikh Sultan, along with senior officials and dignitaries, has toured the event and presented awards for various categories, such as best children’s book and illustrator at SCRF. Upon his arrival to the venue, he was greeted by a group of small girls who presented a performance for him. As always, schoolchildren are also at the event, browsing the huge selection of books and taking part in activities.

This year, a key showpiece at the 11-day festival is The Future Machine, an exhibition that visitors walk through, learning about the journey of robots and Artificial Intelligence since their beginnings and forecasting the shape of things to come. Simulations of nano-bots performing surgery or Cafebots serving coffee are at the show, and so are Virtual Reality trips to Mars.

Another standout section is the pop-up books booth at the venue held under the 3D Books Exhibition. This first-time attraction is by Italian curators Massimo Missiroli and Mathieu Faglia, from the 3D Book Centre in Forli, Italy. The exhibition aims to introduce the UAE’s readers to the ancient art of pop-up or three dimensional books, whose earliest examples are said to be found in 13th Century Catalonia, posing them against the new and emerging technologies in this genre of image-heavy, performance based literature.

Visitors to the 3D Book Exhibition can see 250 of these books that have been handpicked by the exhibition curators to represent eight different periods of time. These books will include At The Beginning (1880), From The Third Dimension To The Pop-Up (1920), The Birth of the Name “Pop-Up” (1930), The Carousel Books (1940), Global Production (1950), The Art Of Voitec Kubasta (1960), The Wally Pop-Up Era (1970), and finally, A New Amazing Millennium (2000).

Also, a total of 355 artworks is showcased at the Sharjah Children’s Books Illustrations Exhibition at SCRF. This year, the exhibited works are contributed by 104 illustrators from 32 countries. This includes 12 from the UAE, constituting the nation’s largest participation in the exhibition’s history. This is followed by 29 illustrators other Arab countries and 63 from the rest of the world.

SCRF 2018 will feature 134 publishing houses from 18 Arab and foreign countries, and brings together 288 guests, including authors, artists and illustrators from 121 countries who will engage in 2,600 cultural events and art activities throughout the 11-day literary extravaganza.

Moreover, among the famous authors and illustrators at SCRF is Britain’s Ed Vere, whose ‘Max the Brave’ is a New York Times bestseller and was named one of The Sunday Times’ ‘100 Modern Children’s Classics’. Ed will be talking to students in the session ‘Be Creative’, encouraging them to take more interest in reading and story-telling.

India’s Varun Pruthi, a humanitarian, actor, director and social media star who became well known via his social experiment videos on YouTube – earning 1.7 million subscribers – will hold a speaker session titled ‘Giving Back’.

Miranda Paul from the USA is an award-winning children’s author, who has received starred reviews from School Library Journal and Publishers Weekly, will be talking about why we all love to laugh and how a humorous story can get even the most reluctant reader interested in books.

The UK’s Sibéal Pounder is the bestselling author of the Bad Mermaids series and Witch Wars, which has been translated into 10 languages. Sibéal will be showing students how to create fantasy worlds and comedy characters in the students’ session ‘Fairy Tales and Witches’