Students show appetite for knowledge at the Book Fair

[gallery size="medium" td_select_gallery_slide="slide" td_gallery_title_input="Students show appetite for knowledge at the Book Fair" ids="106921,106920,106919,106918"] By Saleh Fareed JEDDAH — Local school children and college students flooded the second Jeddah International Book Fair on its fourth day, as they browsed through the many books on display. Following the opening ceremony on Thursday, the hallways of the center located in south Abhur quickly filled up with various people, as they spread across the 21,500 sq. meter area. With the participation of around 450 publishing houses representing 21 countries and more than 1.5 million books to choose from, the fair has proved to be a favorite among Jeddah students. As schools resumed on Sunday, many schools have organized trips to the fair and many students were strolling around the stalls of the publishing houses as they picked their favorite books. Walking around the various stalls looking for a book, Noran Ba Zuhair, a student of a private school, said she came along with her schoolmates to the fair to buy a number of books to read for the whole year. She said also that she purchased several books from the fair, which include literature, reference books, and biographies of famous personalities. Her classmate, Aya Al-Mansour said: “When we heard of this book fair, we were eager to visit it and we discussed this with our teacher to plan a visit to the mega event. The teacher readily agreed and we are here today.” She added “We bought books of our choice. I bought a book on art and we really enjoyed the visit tremendously.” Umm Khalid, who was guiding her students through the many book stalls, said: “I’ve visited the fair for the second year, and the reason we are here because my students are working on reports and also picking their own books. As teachers we work hard to instill a love for reading in our students and develop their reading habits, thus developing and improving the culture of reading.” International School students spent hours conquering the book stands and halls in the quest for familiar book covers and titles that they had written on their lists. With their hands, full of comics, novels, biography, they showed that they are truly different, hungry for knowledge. Asim Jamal, an international school student, told Saudi Gazette: “Over here, I’m able to find books on politics from the best publishers from around 21 countries. What I like about the books I find here is that they are from well-known publishing houses and they provide me with the bestselling and the latest books, which is what I always look for,” he said. Muhanad Naje, a special needs student, visited the Jeddah International Book Fair on the fourth day and described the annual event as a “a great event for knowledge”. “I could get some rare books in the fair. The fair provides an excellent opportunity to one and all to buy the books of their choice,” he said. Naje was looking forward to taking a tour of the fair to buy international books translated into Arabic.