DUBAI - Children from schools in the UAE have read nearly a million books as the curtains fell on the two-week Million Book Challenge on Sunday.
Even though official figures are yet to confirm the exact number of books read, the number stood at 903,798 books on Friday last.
Launching the second phase of Dubai Cares on November 2, His Highness Shaikh Mohammed bin Rashid Al Maktoum, Vice-President and Prime Minister of the UAE and Ruler of Dubai, called on students, aged 3 to 14 years, in the UAE to read a million books and for each book read, Dubai Cares will purchase a book and donate it to a child in need, in their local language, in different countries. Indian High School announced last week that the count of books read by its junior and senior class students exceeded 150,000.
According to the school, different strategies like ‘Book Swap’, ‘Read All Day’, ‘Drop Everything and Read’ were among the innovative methods adopted to encourage students from kindergarten to Grade IX to read.
Mystery book readers made surprise visits to schools and read books to students, besides motivating them to read as much as possible, since the launch of the initiative. The mystery book readers have been recruited by Dubai Cares.
Mohammed Abdullah Al Gergawi, Minister of Cabinet Affairs of the Federal Government, Dr. Omar Bin Sulaiman, Governor of the Dubai International Financial Centre and Vice Chairman of the UAE Central Bank, Freej creator Mohammed Saeed Harib and Dr Hanif Hassan, the UAE Minister of Education, were some mystery book readers, who made surprise visits to different schools.
Last week, 87 adults did the reading for a record 3,032 children at the Global Village Amphitheatre, hence achieving a large-scale entry in the Guinness Book of World Records, the previous registered world record being 1,632 children read to by 47 adults.
George Bell, the tallest man in the US, who attended the event, said, “It’s truly amazing what I saw here; I really didn’t know what to expect when I accepted the invitation to come to Dubai, but I am truly fascinated.”
Burj Dubai, the tallest building in the world, has been a visual thermometre, indicating the progress the campaign had made.
Each evening, Dubai Cares beamed the total number of books read on Burj Dubai.