This year’s edition of the National Book Festival is expected to attract a record number of visitors, the Chairman of the National Book Council, Mark Camilleri said today.
Over 40 exhibitors are taking part, including some from Italy, France and Spain and attendance for the event is expected to attract over 30,000 people.
Mr Camilleri said the festival will be held at the Mediterranean Conference Centre between today and noon on Sunday. The main aim, he said, was to make the book festival one of Malta’s most important cultural events.
The festival, which is being sponsored by APS Bank, will this year feature a number of innovations, including actors dressed up as book characters, which will be interacting with school children and helping them enter a “world of dreams and fantasy.”
School children visiting the festival will each be given a €3 voucher to spend on books. On top of this there are 4,000 €5 vouchers to be given to children between the ages of 3 and 5 on Saturday. Mr Camilleri said the council wanted to instil a reading culture among young children, pointing out that if children start reading at a young age they would remain readers for life.
Education Minister Evarist Bartolo said the National Book Council’s profile and activities had increased greatly. The council, he said, was being very supportive in initiatives aimed at encouraging young people to read more. Mr Bartolo said reading books was still an essential element of child development.
Asked if technology was contributing to a decline in reading, Mr Camilleri said statistics showed that book reading was actually on the rise. In Malta, the spread of online services has had a bigger effect on newspapers than it did on books. Book reading had suffered a decline in Western countries with the introduction of e-books but was slowly regaining popularity. Mr Camilleri said children’s books and novels remained the most popular categories in Malta.
Minister Bartolo added that while the widespread use of the internet has contributed to a decline in library visits reading was actually increasing. Technology and reading could complement each other, he said, noting that teachers and pupils at the Zabbar primary school had recently recently written their own e-book.
Mr Bartolo also spoke highly of Maltese authors and publishers. The quality and quantity of local books had increased greatly over the past years. He praised publishers for not getting discouraged despite working against the current in a small market. Mr Camilleri added that around 600 books are published locally each year.