Storytime Goes Digital - Should We Be Afraid?

I don't believe any one type of books should prevail. The new ereaders are great for travels, vacation, small apartments.

But real books also have their important role. Children need to learn the skills of dealing with a physical book as well.

Read Aloud Dad

www.ReadAloudDad.com

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Books are going digital. As long as people are reading, who cares how it's happening?

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Being a retired reading teacher, anything that inspires kids to read I'm all in favor of. And, if these e-readers get them to read faster, by having the pages turn quicker, all the better. Most kids/young people read too slowly leaving time for their minds to wander, thus not comprehending the material efficiently. There is too much oral reading in school and not enough silent reading which a child can do much faster than mouthing each word. All of this is so important in how successful children are in testing. Once a child learns to read they must spend time reading to themselves without ANY mouth movement - VERY important!! And, holding one of the e-readers would be a great device for doing that.

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Will our digital books be available 100 years from now? Will scholars 100 years from now who will be researching our culture have access to all our e-books of the present? Who will decide which ones have their formats updated every 10 or 20 years?

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I looked into buying a kindle for myself (wanted one for my bday) and while I'm fully grown, I abandoned the idea b/c:

a. they're expensive
b. the downloads cost the same as the actual physical book in most cases, on top of the initial cost of the kindle
c. as a printmaker and book artist I just couldn't get over my guilt at the thought of abandoning my paper friends, the feel of the paper b/t my fingers, the smell of musty old paper in a well worn and often-torn and often 2nd hand book. . .

I have so many fond memories of curling up in a rocking chair w/various family members for a good bed time story and being read too when I was sick and you just can't emulate that digitally. . .

plus that sense of pride looking at that huge stack of books when you finish acquiring an entire book series. . .

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I'm so torn.....I LOVE books!!! I am, however, all about saving our planet and when I think about the number of trees saved by going cyber....well, it is obviously the thing to do to save the trees....then we'll have all those unemplyed people with Georgia Pacific and all the people who depend on lumber for there livelihoods....OY! Who is the least affected and who is most rewarded???? First do no harm.........After all this confusion, my heart tells me that cyber is unavoidable, current, and probably the most forward-thinking decision in the best interest of all. It is Darwinian. It is progress. It is where we are now. I am buying Nooks for my family for Christmas. I love Barnes & Noble and I'm saving trees....and I can download millions of books anywhere, anytime. Thanks for helping me work thru this without a therapist.

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No Way do I think kids should be reading EBooks especially under 10. Parents should be reading kids books plus it is great to be open a books and look at all the illustrations with your child. Kids spend enough time watching TV, playing video games. They don't even play outside anymore!!!! Bad Idea and not one I will be investing in.

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I'm not surprised that storytime for kids is going digital, but I don't see what all the fuss is over with parents complaining that kids look at screens all day when none of us are really any better off. At this point in time, everything is going digital. We all look at screens for things and how can we say that 'It's only bad for kids." when that's not true. Businesses are going with apps and cell phones. College kids are going with laptops and the rest of us are getting our email and looking at ebay. If you have a digital book, it can make bedtime more enjoyable and digital books don't wear out unlike their paper cousins.

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1st, I have a 3 year old daughter. Until she's much, much older and can read well on her own, I will NOT let her use 1 of these digital readers. I think that kids need to be read to by a real person. Sure there are environmental benefits to digital books. We recycle her old books so I don't feel so bad about cutting down trees to make new 1's. There's bonding that happens when reading a book that just doesn't take place any other time. There's the feel of a book in her hand, being able to carefully look at every picture, every printed letter. My daughter "reads" her books without me often just by looking at the pictures and making up her own story. What about language learning? Even if there is some "voice" reading the story to the child, it's just not the same as a real person's face-to-face tone. When you read a book with a child, you can ask them questions to help them gain more than just entertainment value. Often my daughter asks me questions about the books we read that I never would have thought of on my own! We've looked up information on instruments after reading Dr. Seuss, talked about why it doesn't snow where princess Jasmine lives - a digital reader would never have that kind of involvement! Once they're older, it's fine for a kid to have an ereader. But I truly believe that young children really NEED to be read to from paper books.

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In addition to everything that everyone else has mentioned. You should also consider the fact that there are some types of books that ereaders just can't replace. (i.e.- pop-up books, scratch-and-sniff, the books with all of soft and fuzzy things that you can touch, or the cardboard books that have the pieces that you can take out and play with) Granted most of those examples are for very young readers, but it still should be considered.

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I can see where these ditigal books have their place, such as travelling or in situations where you don't want to be burdened down by a heavy book or two (or more). But I love books. I like the way they feel in my hands, I like the smell, the sound as a page turns. I love going into a bookstore and browsing around, looking for treasures. Just not the same with the electronic books.

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Digital books for children especially tots is just one more way for lazy parents to dumb down their kids as well as themselves and it's pitiful the rationalizations.

I remember a book I had when I was small. Oh I think I was about 5. That was in 1964.It was a book about a bear but can't remember his name. Oh I loved it. Why? It had big hard cardboard pages. The pictures? The bears had fuzz! I couldn't read the book, but I remember dad reading it to me and encouraging me to rub the bears' fuzz. After that, he didn't need to read it because I already knew the story. But I just loved touching that bear fuzz to the point where it wore off.

You can't duplicate an experience like that with a stupid digital book. Now maybe feeling a picture book's flocked animals is considered lame today, but back then it was an amazing experience. And to this day I'm a very tactile person. I have to feel objects because of a book.

I have these Spanish books with animals. Are they flocked? Nope. But the pages are the same hard cardboard. I love their smooth feel, their weightiness and the pictures are of real animals, most of which will no doubt go extinct. The point is, it's a book! A book I can hold. A book I can feel. A book that I actually know how to turn the pages to!

I have a many books from my late uncle. I'm looking at a book I've never read called Galahad. Enough of his life to explain his repuration by a man called John Erskine. I have no clue who he is. But the book is amazing to handle. The letters on the cover are raised. It's an original book. Copyright? 1926! My uncle was 5 when it was published, and it was published a year before dad was born. Now, maybe an old book like this would be great in digital, but to actually feel a book 84 years old, an original, is out of this world! And what's in some pages are old cardboard cut outs of animals from the era of my uncle, so old and faded that they left impressions on the pages. You can't get that from some stupid digital image. The rest of his books are from the 30's and 40's. They may not be considered rare books, but they're books! You can touch their covers which modern books don't have. You have yellowed pages. They're pricesless to me. Give these books to a child of today and they wouldn't know how to even turn the darn page much less appreciate the value of something published before their parents were born.

My uncle has this beatufil daily prayer book in English and Hebrew of the old German and Polish Jews. It's a 7th edition but it has no copyright. It's got a beautiful faded white cover with with metal embossed design. With this kind of book you read from the back to the front. On it's faded page before the first page is "Presented by Uncle Sam the 7th Tebeth 5661(by the Hebrew Calendar) and underneath that is written the 29th Dec. 1900. This precious book is 110 years old! The tops, sides and bottom of the page is fading gold gild. The pages are old and yellow but beautifully intact. Could it be digitalized? No question. Is it a book for children, no. But the point is, I'm handling an old book with an inscription by someone I have no clue about, long dead, but no doubt someone special to my uncle to be given this precious book. To digitalize this book, or any book of this era would be an insult! Maybe handling fragile pages 110 years old means nothing to the modern reader, adult or child, but to me, it's special because it exists. It's not ruined by modern technology. Who knows who and when this Uncle Sam got it. It could be worth thousands or nothing at all. But it's a real book. It's not a computer screen. It's not a talking book.

I appreciate this book because growing up that's all I had. Real books. Real pages to turn. Real print.Real pages that can fade with the passage of time. I appreciate this magnificent thing because it's something I can hold and caress and gaze with awe in its very survival. You don't get that with digital books. And when the batteries go and the screen pops off, you have nothing! Digital is only good as long as the 'light' is on.

This precious prayer book has no batteries to run out. It has no fancy buttons or touch screen to move pages.It has no lit screen. It has no idiotic pen to sound out words. Give this book to a child and they'd look at it and go "what's this? How do you turn it on?" That's more pathetic than a child who can't read. Give this book to an adult raised in the digital era and they wouldn't appreciate its age. It's faded gold gilding. It's fragile pages. It's rusted but intact metal embellishments. You can't get that awesomeness from some digital 'book' which is nothing but a flat screen for the lazy.

Whether a book is from 1900 or 2010, if you have turn it on to read, I think you're missing a lot and so are children. They're too dumbed down by technology where they can't even learn to read without some computer voice, or touch pen on a word teaching them or a lit up screen. The worst part is that no one will teach them what a 'real' book is!

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