Making dog ears in books may be a habit with some but if you learn to make smart bookmarks that sit snugly in a corner of the page, reading is going to be a fun and welcome pastime.

Trainers from Comme il Faut were at it again at the ongoing 40th Sharjah International Book Fair (SIBF) – making each learning experience fun for six-year-olds with dancing, music, graphics on screen and generally making it child’s play.

After dancing her way into the kids’ hearts, trainers Marharyta Khomenko and Nadya Cabay sat them down and gave some book care rules, “do not draw or colour in a library book, keep your library books away from food and drinks and so on.”

A bookmark, she told them, was an essential book care tool and prepared to make a tiger bookmark corner.

She gave each participant square paper in different colours and asked them to fold it in the middle to get a triangle, fold again to make a square, and fold it backwards to create a pocket. Tiger nose, ears, eyes and whiskers were given separately to fix with glue, and each child deftly made the orange paper tiger come to life.

Next, they went on to make a green monster the same way followed by a minion in yellow and blue. As a bonus, each participant was allowed to take away their creations.

“Today our task was to teach kids to take care of books, to tell them that bookmarks save books and give them longer life. We made one tiger because next year is the Year of the Tiger (Chinese calendar), while minion is a favourite cartoon character. We use dance in between as children won’t sit still for long.”

This is a very interesting workshop to develop motor skills and imagination and is on at SIBF 2021 twice a day till November 13.