The 11^th edition of Sharjah Children’s Reading Festival (SCRF), organised by Sharjah Book Authority (SBA) from April 17–27, at Sharjah Expo Centre, is going big with its efforts to showcase the wondrous world of comic arts and Japanese Manga to the festival’s young visitors.

The dedicated station at the festival will be featuring as many as 80 unique activities to indulge comic book enthusiast, artists, illustrators and the general public, with this hugely popular genre of the graphic novels and comic art.

Guest artists

Renowned Arab artists including Shihabaldeen Almusharaf, Majed Al Shammari, Hany Saleh, and Khadija Alsaeedi, and international artists Midori Harada, Mark Kistler, Savio Mascarenhas, and Aśka, will engage children in activities dedicated to this form of art.

Activities

One workshop will introduce participants to the methods and technicalities of creating and designing superheroes, aliens and mythical characters. Another one will focus on story-writing and character-building, and will give participants a glimpse of the history of comics and Japanese Manga. Visitors to this station will also have the option to purchase arts on display at the ‘Artists Alley’, in addition to a competition titled ‘Superhero and the Villain’, which will be held at the festival’s theatre.

Comics are an artform expressed through images, often combined with text or other visual information, and frequently takes the form of images for juxtaposed sequences of panels. According to historians, this artform dates back to 1730, when English artist William Hogarth created comic strip-like series of pictures called ‘modern moral subjects’.

The art of Manga started being created in Japan in the 19th century, with the first manga book published in 1872. A lot of manga content has been published as animation due to its high popularity.

SCRF is one of the most important cultural events dedicated to children in the UAE and the greater region. It has gone beyond being a book exhibition and developed into an integrated event, that contributes to enriching the knowledge of visitors with science and literature and garners the participation of organisations and centers dedicated to children.