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Reading Rockets' children's literature expert, Maria Salvadore, brings you into her world as she explores the best ways to use kids' books both inside — and outside — of the classroom.
Do books have a future?
It's interesting to think about a holiday season with no books. I'm talking about the traditional book, and picture books in particular.
When I read a recent Newsweek article about Jeff Bezo's Amazon Kindle — the newest generation of the e-book — well, it gave me pause. Will it replace the traditional book — a practically perfect device as the piece states?
We know that children from 0 to 6 are already media savvy. In fact, research indicates that young children actually spend more time in front of screens (television, computer, etc.) than playing outdoors. Reading comes in a distant third.
I'm not sure I'd want to cuddle up with a child and a Kindle (or any other e-book for that matter), but it sure is an interesting thought. Jean Gralley, an illustrator and author of children's books thinks that picture books can reside in an electronic medium.
Can technology encourage reading? It's been suggested that it can — and I suppose that makes sense. One has to be literate to use technology, right? And decoding pictures — as pre-readers do — is not totally dissimilar to decoding words, is it?
Let me know what you think of e-books, digital picture books, and where these changes may lead to. I'll keep thinking about it...but THIS holiday season, it'll be traditional format of books for me.