Abu Dhabi: A ten-day ‘reading week’ exhibition opened in Abu Dhabi, with the National Library and the Abu Dhabi Tourism and Culture Authority sponsoring the event.
The exhibition was inaugurated by Mohammad Al Nuaimi, Deputy Secretary General of the Federation of the UAE Chambers of Commerce and Industry, at the World Trade Centre Mall. The event sims to encourage children, parents and people from all walks of life to explore and find out about the latest books and publishers on a variety of topics.
Gulf News spoke with Hany Khalil, the managing director of the exhibition, for details about the event. “This exhibition brings together the book industry, publishers, and distributors for both books and magazines. All of the book publishers and distributors involved are local based as well, and so we are looking to get families and members of the public to come here and engage with this event,” he said.
Khalil also spoke of how reading week is looking to make books attractive to students. “In this century, most students are going to multimedia, buying iPads or other devices, and what you have is a lot of people these days not reading in a traditional way. So now we want to encourage students to go back to reading books again, and to develop the books industry.”
The exhibition organisers are giving particular attention to school visits, especially for pupils aged from 9 to 14.
“We have several different types of books, we have books on economics, business, science, as well as religious books. Arabic fiction is also available, including books that teach you how to speak Arabic as well as how to speak Arabic properly with the accent,” Khalil said.
Children’s activities will be part of the event during the weekends.
— Sami Zaatari is a trainee at Gulf News
