Gold Ring is an United Arab Emirates

United Arab Emirates

The United Arab Emirates, abbreviated as the UAE, or shortened to "the Emirates", is a state situated in the southeast of the Arabian Peninsula in Western Asia on the Persian Gulf, bordering Oman, and Saudi Arabia, and sharing sea borders with Iraq, Kuwait, Bahrain, Qatar, and Iran.The UAE is a...

 comic written by Qais Sedki

Qais Sedki

Qais Sedki is a children's author from Dubai, United Arab Emirates. The first volume of his Arabic comic Gold Ring won the Sheikh Zayed Book Award for Children's Literature in the year 2010.- References :...

  and drawn by Akira Himekawa

Akira Himekawa

is the pen name of a duo of female comic book artists.The artists have worked together since 1991 and have not chosen to reveal their real names. The women are individually pen named and...

. The book is the UAE's first manga

Manga

Manga is the Japanese word for "comics" and consists of comics and print cartoons . In the West, the term "manga" has been appropriated to refer specifically to comics created in Japan, or by Japanese authors, in the Japanese language and conforming to the style developed in Japan in the late 19th...

. The comic is printed in Arabic; an English version is available through mail order.

Sedki, an Emirati who is a father of two children, left his IT

Information technology

Information technology is the acquisition, processing, storage and dissemination of vocal, pictorial, textual and numerical information by a microelectronics-based combination of computing and telecommunications...

 job to become a comic book author. He founded Pageflip, a Dubai

Dubai

Dubai is a city and emirate in the United Arab Emirates . The emirate is located south of the Persian Gulf on the Arabian Peninsula and has the largest population with the second-largest land territory by area of all the emirates, after Abu Dhabi...

 publishing house which publishes his work. Sedki wrote the dialog in Classical Arabic

Classical Arabic

Classical Arabic , also known as Qur'anic or Koranic Arabic, is the form of the Arabic language used in literary texts from Umayyad and Abbasid times . It is based on the Medieval dialects of Arab tribes...

; he said that he wanted to fight the perception that Classical Arabic, associated with schoolwork, was "boring." To help form his comic, Sedki approached a female duo of comic book artists known under the pen name Akira Himekawa and asked for consultation on how to best express the manga style. The Himekawa duo became the artists of the books. Gold Ring was awarded the 2010 Sheikh Zayed Book Award

Sheikh Zayed Book Award

The Sheikh Zayed Book Award is "one of the most prestigious and well-funded prizes in the Arab World." It is presented yearly to "Arab writers, intellectuals, publishers as well as young talent whose writings and translations of humanities have scholarly and objectively enriched Arab cultural,...

 for children's literature.

Story

The story revolves around Sultan, an Arab boy who watches the Gold Ring falconry

Falconry

Falconry is "the taking of wild quarry in its natural state and habitat by means of a trained raptor". There are two traditional terms used to describe a person involved in falconry: a falconer flies a falcon; an austringer flies a hawk or an eagle...

 competition with his friend Ziad. At the competition they find a caged falcon. Sultan convinces his friend to release the falcon into the wild. The next morning, the falcon is at Sultan's doorstep. Sultan calls the bird "Majid" and trains her for an upcoming falconry competition.

External links

• Pageflip Publishing
• Pageflip Publishing
• Interview with Qais Sedki (Part 1) - Sail Magazine
• Interview with Qais Sedki (Part 2) - Sail Magazine