BATOOL GHAITH (ABU DHABI)
At a time when there is growing competition for young people’s attention, the UAE is expanding efforts to make reading a natural part of young people’s everyday life through school programmes, libraries and literary festivals.
Ahlam Bolooki, CEO of the Emirates Literature Foundation, Director of the Emirates Airline Festival of Literature and Managing Director of ELF Publishing, said one of the biggest challenges is the constant competition for people’s attention.
“We live in a world of constant stimulation and competing demands for our attention, reading for pleasure asks us to do almost the opposite: to slow down, focus on one task, use our imagination, and stay with something long enough to become absorbed in it,” Bolooki told Aletihad.
But she stressed that the issue should not simply be framed as young people reading less. “They are reading all the time, but they are reading differently,” she said, pointing to short-form text, messages, captions, articles, comics and stories consumed across different platforms.
Bolooki indicated that young people should be given enough opportunities to experience deeper and more sustained reading.
“If reading for pleasure becomes another task that comes with questions, tests, or a requirement to prove what you have learnt, it stops feeling like pleasure,” she said.
Children need access to a wide range of material and the freedom to discover what interests them, whether that is a novel, graphic novel, comic, poem, football book, fantasy, adventure or non-fiction, Bolooki added.
She also stressed the importance of starting early through reading aloud from birth, making books part of family life and allowing children to see adults enjoying reading.
Reading without Assessment
Dania Droubi, COO of the Emirates Literature Foundation, said the UAE has already made reading a national priority through initiatives including the National Policy for Reading and the Month of Reading.
“The key is not to reduce reading to something that is celebrated on a particular day, during a week, or as part of a campaign, but to make it a part of everyday life,” Droubi told Aletihad. She noted that teachers and librarians play an important role, but reading should not become another assessment.
“One thing teachers can do is avoid turning every reading experience into an assessment. Children need to learn how to read, of course, but they also need to experience what it feels like to love reading,” Droubi added.
She said classroom libraries and reading corners can give students space to read freely once they finish assigned work, stressing that libraries themselves should be more than places where books are stored.
Droubi noted that well-stocked spaces should include books that reflect children’s everyday realities while also opening unfamiliar worlds to them, particularly in a multilingual and multinational country such as the UAE.
Some schools have also developed reading gardens where children can enjoy books alongside nature, she said. “These spaces show that reading does not have to be confined to a desk or a classroom,” Droubi noted.
Keeping Arabic at the Centre
Both Bolooki and Droubi highlighted the importance of making Arabic reading relevant and enjoyable.
Droubi said the UAE and wider region need to maintain ties with the mother tongue and avoid allowing Arabic reading to become associated only with homework or obligation.
Bolooki said the Emirates Literature Foundation works across the wider reading ecosystem, from early childhood and schools to families, educators, writers, publishers, libraries and literary events.
Its Reading for Pleasure programmd is being piloted in schools without a testing mechanism because the focus is on intrinsic motivation to read.
Bolooki also pointed to initiatives across the UAE including the Arab Reading Challenge, Abu Dhabi Arabic Language Centre, Abu Dhabi International Book Fair and Sharjah International Book Fair.
“There is still more to do, of course. We need to keep making reading relevant to children’s lives, strengthen Arabic reading, support parents and teachers, encourage publishing houses to have children in mind, and create more opportunities for children to discover books outside the classroom,” she noted.
For Bolooki, success would ultimately be measured not simply by how many books are read, but whether reading becomes a lasting part of people’s lives.
“Success is measured by whether we are creating lasting relationships with reading, rather than simply counting the number of books finished,” she added.