How can we invest in children’s imagination? Can imagination be dangerous? What stimuli imagination of the new generations? These and other questions were answered by specialists in children’s literature, during a dialogue session titled “Your Imagination vs. Children’s Imagination”, within the activities of the Sharjah Children’s Reading Festival in its 14th session at the Sharjah Expo Center.
The session was hosted by Sheikha Maryam Al Qasimi, the Emirati writer specializing in children’s literature, the Egyptian writer Samah Abu Bakr Ezzat, and the Nigerian writer Wali Okidran.
Sheikha Maryam Al Qasimi affirmed, “Boredom is the main enemy of children, and here comes the imagination, which is a source of creativity and the basis for thought. We can help children to relate to reading and literature through imagination, which can make the child move towards self-reliance in solving his problems and facing the challenges he is going through.” with it.”
She added, “Developing children’s imagination is very important, but how is this done? The topic is not only done by writing, sometimes during the workshops I read the story to the children and then I stop! I start by asking them questions and opening the way for their imagination to play the role of the characters in the story and develop a scenario of their own if they were in her place, and how they would deal with it; Therefore, I see comics as one of the best tools that stimulate and develop children’s imagination in a very large way.
