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By David Rothman

image image “Prior to having a child, I loved e-books. After she was born, I appreciated them even more because when I would cradle my newborn daughter in one arm, I loved that I could hold my Kindle in the other arm and flip a page with my thumb, one handed. It was convenient, it was handy. Now that my daughter is 20 months old and reading her own books, I’m equivocating.”

So begin Edward Nawotka’s account in Publishing Perspectives. He still believes in the potential of E but worries “that the advent of ebooks—even our looming dependency on them—is less likely to produce future generations of readers. Or at least the type of reader my daughter is turning out to be. My daughter’s love of brightly dressed animals who talk in a rhyming, omniscient voice is physical and visceral. It’s comforting and it’s very, very real—to her at least. The experience of reading is something she can feel, not just an abstract something-or-other that goes on in her head.”

image Hey, Edward, is it possible that a color tablet—ideally one that was Kindle-simple—would enliven the book experience for your daughter, perhaps with help from the International Children’s Digital Library?

As an ex-child, I’d also suggests papering your daughter’s room with colorful pictures related to what she was reading. And, yes, as an ex-child, I suspect that paper books might still have a place.

imageWhatever gets kids to love books! Children first, experimentation second! That is exactly what I hate about premature talk of a Kindle in “every backpack”—when for some students a Kindle could be a disaster. I would also suggest a carefully phased-in TeleRead-style approach to give children access to zillions of books that matched their interests.

And speaking of kids: Our friend Bob Russell, over at MobileRead, may have a special interest in the above. Congrats to Bob on the recent birth of his son Sean Levi Russell, shown in the photo!

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