Celebrating UAE Reading Month 2026: Experience Complimentary Sessions
Bring the magic of Emirates LitFest 2026 straight to your students with our Virtual Student Edition!
Enjoy inspiring sessions designed for different ages and interests — perfect for students, teachers, librarians, and parents. Wherever you are, exciting stories and ideas are just a click away.
Registration is required, but access is completely FREE for students in the UAE, GCC, and worldwide as part of our contribution to UAE Reading Month.
Available until 3 July 2026.
Scroll down to register!
Sessions
Poems that Wriggle, Roar and Rhyme with Simon Mole
Age: 6+
Join poet and performer Simon Mole for a joyful, interactive session inspired by his brilliant books A First Book of Bugs and A First Book of Dinosaurs. With playful poems and creative games, Simon helps young readers become confident writers and performers. This event celebrates the natural world, imagination, and the fun of language. Whether you’re mad about mini-beasts or dino-obsessed, this is poetry with a big heart and even bigger laughs – a fantastic introduction to rhyme and rhythm for young learners.
Simon Mole is an acclaimed children’s writer, performer, and National Poetry Day ambassador.
A former poet-in-residence for the National Literacy Trust, his popular YouTube series, Write a Poem in 10 Minutes, is used by hundreds of thousands of children and teachers worldwide and has been featured on the BBC. His books include Kites, I Love My Bike, I Love My Cat, and the non-fiction titles A First Book of Dinosaurs and A First Book of Bugs. He has been shortlisted for The Sunday Times Children’s Sports Book of the Year.
He lives in Berkshire with his young family and two extremely fluffy kittens.
Draw-Along Adventures with Rob Biddulph
Age: 8+
Meet the bestselling illustrator and creator of Draw With Rob book and YouTube series, Rob Biddulph! In this lively draw-along session, Rob takes students through the creation of their own characters, while sharing stories from his brilliant books like I Follow the Fox, When I Grow Up I’d Like to Be and Peanut Jones. With step-by-step instructions and funny moments aplenty, this is a must-attend for budding artists and readers alike. Ready your pens and papers for a celebration of creativity and the joy of drawing!
Rob Biddulph is a bestselling, multi award-winning children’s author and illustrator. His books include the Peanut Jones trilogy, When I Grow Up I’d Like To Be…, I Follow the Fox, Blown Away and Odd Dog Out.
In 2020, he launched the viral #DrawWithRob series of online draw-along videos, which was awarded a Guinness World Record for the largest online art class in history. That same year, he was recognised as a Point of Light by the British Prime Minister. In 2025, Rob was named Illustrator of the Year at the British Book Awards.
Rob lives in London with his wife, their daughters, and Ringo the dog.
Awesome Adventures with Nizrana Farook
Age: 10+
Embark on a wild adventure with Nizrana Farook, author of The Girl Who Stole an Elephant and The Boy Who Met a Whale. In this gripping session, Nizrana shares the inspiration behind her edge-of-your-seat stories set in lush, fictional landscapes inspired by her Sri Lankan heritage. Ideal for students looking to develop their creative writing. Learn about designing brave characters, plotting suspense, and building settings that leap off the page.
Nizrana Farook was born and raised in Colombo, Sri Lanka, and the beautiful landscapes of her home country inspire her stories.
Her book, The Girl Who Stole an Elephant, was the UK’s biggest-selling middle grade debut of the year and a Waterstones Children’s Book of the Month. It was nominated for the Carnegie Medal and longlisted for the Blue Peter Award and the Jhalak Prize. She has since written three more books, The Boy Who Met a Whale, The Girl Who Lost a Leopard, and The Boy Who Saved a Bear, set in the same fictional world of Serendib.
Nizrana holds a master’s degree in Writing for Young People and lives in Hertfordshire with her family.
Fight or Flight with Alastair Chisholm
Age: 12+
Step into a world of huge mechanical beasts battling for survival in a shattered land, where danger lurks at every turn. Award-winning author Alastair Chisholm, creator of I Am Wolf and I Am Raven, invites you to join his thrilling interactive event, ‘Fight or Flight’. Discover the secrets of great science fiction, explore why we’re drawn to its stories, and uncover what these imagined worlds reveal about our own and about what makes us truly human. Get ready for adventure, creativity, and big questions in this unforgettable session.
Alastair Chisholm is the author of teen sci-fi adventures Orion Lost, Adam-2 and I Am Wolf. For younger readers, he writes the Dragon Storm series of chapter books and a wide range of picture books.
His work has won Blackwell’s Children’s Book of the Year, been shortlisted for the Waterstones Children’s Book Prize, and longlisted for the Carnegie Medal
He lives in Edinburgh with his wife and family.
To explore sessions in Arabic, please click here.
Teachers and guardians are encouraged to review the selection of sessions to check suitability for their students.
Dive Deeper: Explore the Books
Enhance your experience by reading the featured books before (or after) the sessions – optional, but highly recommended! You can grab your copies now at Magrudy’s online.
Share Student Work With Us!
Let these sessions inspire your students’ creativity.
We would be delighted to showcase student drawings, videos, and writing (short stories, poems, letters!) and other interactions with these sessions on our socials!
Please send us your submissions on the email below.
Contact Us
If you have any further questions or requests, you can email or call us:
| Areeb Yassine areeb.yassine@emirateslitfest.com +971 4 2864750 |
