Day of the Illustrators at Sharjah Children’s Reading Festival 2024
A scene from Sharjah Children’s Reading Festival. Kamal Kassim/Gulf Today
Muhammad Yusuf, Features Writer
The Sharjah Children’s Book Illustrations Exhibition, an integral part of the Sharjah Children’s Reading Festival organised by Sharjah Book Authority, in its 2024 edition, has chosen 71 illustrators as participants and competitors for the main and incentive prizes. They were selected after a review of the presentations which came from all over the world, numbering 425 submissions. The jury, which hailed from around the world, awarded the first prize to Kyoung Mi Ahn from South Korea. Jury commented that “the artist was able to tightly control the technique of her work, and while the illustrations appear dark, they contain a lot of kindness.”
It further said that “we find that in these illustrations, she carries a delicate sensitivity, great celebration of detail and the ability to employ contrast between strict and flat lines and soft shapes. She has also succeeded in creating harmony between all the elements that make up these illustrations …” The second winner is Juan Carlos Palomino of Mexico. “His illustrations are characterised by high spirituality and the ability to tell visual stories in the absence of the individual hero, where heroism is reserved for the place and for the living group … By employing circles that move to and from the centre at the same time, the illustrations also succeed in retaining their charming elegance without deviating from simplicity of construction through a dreamy, sober and wonderful graphic work …,” according to the jury.
The third winner is Daniela Stamatiadi of Greece. “The artist,” says the jury, “succeeds in creating a colour harmony between the range of cold and hot colours used … She also, without violating the requirements of visual construction, has succeeded in employing shadows to give the visual scene its poetry and the superior ability to express without words the meanings and ideas conveyed through bold, professional and consistent illustrations …”
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Incentive prizes have gone to Montserrat Batet Creixell (Spain); Santiago Solis (Mexico) and Mitra Abdollahi (Iran). Jury members included Sahar Naja Mahfouz (Lebanon), a publisher and a writer of children’s and stories for young adults. Born in Beirut, she studied at the American University there. She has, till date, penned over 60 stories for children and adolescents; they have been published by various publishing houses across the Arab world. Mahfouz has also participated in many literary exhibitions and festivals, one of the most notable being the Emirates Airline Festival of Literature. In 2021, she began a new phase of author life by establishing the Kiwi Stories Publishing and Distribution House, fulfilling a dream she nurtured for years. The House now boasts a wide array of stories competing in various competitions, qualifying for Arab and global awards, with some of them being translated into multiple languages. Mahfouz lives in the UAE.
Jury member Fatima Sharafeddine is from Lebanon and is a writer who is dedicated to writing, translating and editing for children and young adults. She works with publishers in Lebanon, the UAE, Egypt and Belgium. She has written and published over 160 books, many of which have been translated into various languages, among which are Dutch, Danish, Spanish, Catalan, French, Italian, German, English, Russian, Chinese, Korean, Turkish, Norwegian, Italian and Swedish. She has received several awards and honours, the last of which was being shortlisted for the Hans Christian Andersen Award, and winning the Gramsci award in Italy for her YA (Young Adult) novel, Faten. She also received the 2017 Etisalat award for the YA book of the year for Cappuccino (Dar Al-Saqi) and the Bologna Ragazzi New Horizons Award for Lisanak Hisanak (Kalimat Publishers).
She was nominated 7 times for the Astrid Lindgren Memorial Award, the last nomination being in 2023. Sharafeddine conducts creative writing workshops for groups and individuals, besides training teachers and librarians on how to share a book with children and to conduct activities around it. Sarah Taibah, also on the jury, is an artist from Jeddah, KSA. She pursued a Master of Fine Arts at the Academy of Art University, San Francisco, specialising in children’s book illustration and printmaking. Over 10 children’s books illustrated by her have been published. In 2022, she published Dream, her first book both illustrated and authored by her. Between 2017 and 2019, she undertook artistic residencies in Barcelona, Berlin, and Paris. In Berlin, she initiated the Mursal project, gathering 70 letters from around the world, written by their authors, but never sent to intended recipients.
Taibah took the letters and illustrated each one, exhibiting them at the Impact exhibition in Jeddah. She later compiled them into the book Mursal, which she published in 2019. Much of her work reflects her own experiences. On the jury also was Inga Dagile, a hyper active Lithuanian artist, specialising in illustration for children’s books, graphic design and teaching art to children. She has contributed illustrations to 10 books, which have been translated into over 20 languages.
Her works are prominently featured in major book fairs. Matthias Dobele (affectionately known as Matze), is a German illustrator and author of children’s books, who was jury member. His works have been translated into multiple languages and have received international recognition, including prestigious ones such as the CJ Picturebook Award, the German-French Award for Youth Literature, the Sharjah Children’s Reading Festival award, the Bologna Children’s Book Fair award and the White Raven award. Dobele is deeply passionate about engaging children with arts and literature through workshops, classes and readings.
