A number of young talents are attending and making their presence felt at the Sharjah Children’s Reading Festival (SCRF 2023), bringing their unique achievements to the fore in setting an example and inspiring their peers to hone their own passions.

At the ongoing 14th annual edition of the 12-day festival, 13-year-old student, high achiever and published author Ann Mary Joseph, a student of Indian High School in Dubai made an appearance. A bookworm who is passionate about writing, Ann is an academic as well as all-round achiever. A winner of the Sheikh Hamdan Award for Distinguished Students in the 2019-2020 cycle, she is also a regular winner at the Inter Continental Spelling Bee and MaRRs International Spelling Bee Championships.

She also got her first comic book - Sam and Sara’s First Adventure - published in 2018 at the age of eight, after winning the first creative contest - Superkidz Competition - by the local Beat Diabetes initiative. “It’s a story about Sam and Sara, two children who start out being lazy, but with the help of a robot friend and their own journey in fitness and other activities, realise that health is wealth,” says Ann. “I also contributed to an anthology of stories - Elemental Magic - published in 2021 and available on Amazon.”

Ann’s other - and long list - of feats include winning the Best Demonstration Award in the MakeX Spark Global Competition in 2021 for her creation Project mCurador. A member of her school’s Student Council since Grade 3, she has also taken part in Model United Nations Conferences, grabbing a few awards like the Best Delegate Award (UNODC, IHSMUN’21), Diplomacy Award (UNHCR, ROMUN 2020) and Outstanding Delegate (ECOSOC, Imprint MUN 2.0). 
“My message to my peers is to nurture the reading habit and to share your talents as much as possible,” says Ann. “I’m working on a poetry collection right now, and have completed about 25 poems. My aim is to get it published later this year, when I finish more than 30 poems.” 

Besides excelling in Trinity College London exams for electronic keyboard, the teenager also enjoys filmmaking and won the third prize in the Rajbhasha Utsav (2020) by the Indian Consulate in collaboration with Bharti Bhasha Samvardhan Samadhan, for a short film about Mahatma Gandhi. A Bronze Award winner in the Dr. APJ Abdul Kalam Ignite Minds Award 2020 Scholarship examination, Ann is a regular contributor to children’s magazines as well.