Sharjah Book Fair: Bigger, better with more books, more fun

Sharjah International Book Fair (SIBF) at it's 34th edition, established in 1982, ranks among the top four book fairs in the world in terms of buying and selling of rights.

This year's SIBF 2015 received a record breaking 1.5 million different book titles in 210 different languages, from 1,502 publishing houses from 64 countries, being displayed at the fair.

Visitor numbers are also looking strong, flowing in at about the same rate as last year, when a total of 1.47 million people visited.

The fair hosts a lot of new activates which can be enjoyed by people of different age groups and at the same time they can still exhibit a large variety of books.

International Publishers & Authors

Publishers and Authors from different countries participated in Sharjah Book Fair.

Abdul Wahab Al Rafaai, author from Kuwait, said that this is his fourth participation at the book Fair, and the meager improvement that he noticed is that the activates are more than the past years and this time it is involving different age groups.

Yousf Al Eissa, owner of 'Dar Sama Publishing house', also expressed the happiness about the exhibition this year from its different aspects, and his publishing house is offering almost 100 books of different authors from different countries.

"This is my third participation and I can tell that each year the book fair is getting better and better, from the organization, activities, and visitors involvement," said Al Eissa.

Another owner of a publishing house from the Indian Section, Hummy, said that she can see that children are becoming more interested in reading books, not only fiction stories, but they are also searching for study materials, and books which teach them another languages.

Hummy

Visitors
 
Fatima Ahmed, a mother of three children, said that she brings her children every year to the exhibition, and she noticed that the secret to attract children to books is the colorful and attractive characters.

"My children loves the stories which they interact with, for example, adding fabrics or games to the stories definitely encourage the children to buy books," she added.

Social Media & Activates

Abdullatif Al Sarabi, a manager in the Social Media Platform at the exhibition, said that this year the social media is much bigger than last year, and the activates are also more fun.

This year the social media platform is hosting a lot of different famous personalisties from actors, singers, and social media people, during the period of the exhibition.

The Arab Reading Challenge, is also participating in the exhibition, this challenge aim to encourage students to read, the challenge requires them to read and summarize 50 stories for each student.

Rodah, student, is one of millions of students all over the world who participated in this challenge, and she said that she already finished 40 books and 10 are left to finish her part of the challenge.