Of reading: Children queue up for fun-filled education at CLF

Farooq Qaiser, Taimur Rehman and Khaled Anam, among others, will participate today.

ISLAMABAD:

For three days this week, the Federal College of Education (FCE) turned into a venue for a giant literary carnival.

On Friday, children took over the college building in Sector H-9 as the two-day 14th Children’s Literature Festival (CLF) materialized there as colorfully as it might have appeared in a child’s unbridled imagination.

Organised by the Idara-e-Taleem-o-Agahi and Oxford University Press (OUP) in collaboration with the Open Society Foundations and the FCE, the festival was held just a day after a Teachers’ Literature Festival concluded at the same venue.

Hundreds of children from schools of the twin cities descended on the CLF to make it their own.

Children in school uniforms whizzed in and out of the college building.

Some sat under a canopy in the lawn to watch puppet shows and musical performances.

Others formed orderly queues, chaperoned by teachers, to enter ordinary class rooms made magical by their content. Inside, writers and artists entertained the children with interactive storytelling and jokes and tips to fire up their creative skills.

There were public discussions on serious issues such as education, curriculum and promotion of reading too. But the children were unsurprisingly more interested in the fun part.

In a third-floor room, Adeel Hashmi got primary-age school kids to recite after him “aik tha larka tot batot” at the top of their lungs - Sufi Tabassum’s unforgettable character of tot batot finding a new life in young hearts.

Just a floor down, students from Bostaan’Ilm, a school for underprivileged children in Rawalpindi, joined children from other private and public schools to literally make books.

They wrote stories and drew pictures on plain paper, then made book covers out of coloured cardboard to bind the paper.

Books, complete with their young authors’ credentials, and even a sale price in some cases, were displayed on a line in the room like clothes hung out to dry.

Abdul Rehman, who has studied at Bostaan’Ilm for five years, wrote a story in his book about his house and its proximity to his cousin’s home, as his friends nearby drew kites and flowers on their personal books.

Most children at the CLF admitted to not reading a lot of story books. But there were plenty of efforts at the festival to attract them to reading.

The fifth edition of the CLF’s own literary magazine Uran Tashtaree (Flying Saucer) was launched on Friday. Rumana Husain, a director of the CLF and prominent author, launched her book “Layla aur Munni Guriya” during a session in which playwright Haseena Moin also interacted with the students.

OUP will launch 20 new books during the CLF to create awareness about issues such as environment and heritage, said Ameena Saiyid, the Managing Director of OUP and a co-founder of CLF.

“We have organised this festival for the reason that children can be brought closer to reading,” Saiyid said.

Rawalpindi SS Montessori school Vice Principal Annie Fatima said the CLF was a great opportunity to help children understand the importance of reading and literature.

Earlier, during the opening ceremony, the Deputy Head of the European Union Pierre Mayaudon said the festival is a great achievement and activities such as CLF will definitely generate positivity among the youth. Writer and playwright Haseena Moin, in her keynote address, said it is the need of the hour to preserve literature and stressed that children’s engagement with literary activities should be facilitated.

The CLF is being held for the second time in two years in Islamabad. It is, however, the 14th literature festival for children organised in Pakistan overall.

The CLF will end on Saturday with more sessions and performances featuring artists such as Farooq Qaiser, Fauzia Minallah, Taimur Rehman and Khaled Anam among others.

Published in The Express Tribune, May 3^rd, 2014.