Students were busy folding an A4 sized white sheet, carefully cutting it to create a mini book. It was interesting to see how by following a few simple steps using common tools and materials they could make a lovely pocket-sized paper book.

The workshop titled, ‘Small Books but Big Stories’, was held at Sharjah International Book Fair (SIBF) 2019, and led by AnnMarie Rowland, who made a trans-Atlantic journey to bring her skills to the UAE’s kids on the SIBF platform. 

While this is the third time she is visiting Sharjah, she twice earlier conducted workshops at the annual Sharjah Children’s Reading Festival. This was Ann’s first experience at the book fair, which she seemed to be thoroughly enjoying, “I love children. So, through my workshop I try and teach them some basic bookmaking techniques that’ll empower them to make their own books which they can fill with drawings and writings”. 

With this, she instructs them to pick a card each containing a noun, a verb and an adjective from the 3 colourful bags laid out in front of them on the table. The idea… to use these figures of speech to then build a story by developing a character, plot, conflict, resolution and an end. 

So, the takeaway from this interesting 30-minutes session was that children not only learnt the fundamentals of book making, but each of them had their own versions of a fascinating fable. Ultimately, they all walked out proudly with a personal miniature book.