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Do Children's E-Books Ruin Reading?

Posted by timothy on from the different-nodes-in-the-brain dept.

An anonymous reader writes "A fierce argument has begun over whether children are actually 'reading' new e-books or simply 'watching' them. As publishers pump increasing levels of interactivity into e-books, the New York Times and others argue that these highly-interactive, popular titles are ruining the purpose of reading. The NYT also worries that new e-book titles could distract kids from the tougher task of actually concentrating on literature: '[W]hat will become of the readers we've been: quiet, thoughtful, patient, abstracted, in a world where interactive can be too tempting to ignore?' Others, like Gizmodo, defend these new e-books, pointing at titles like Alice for the iPad, of which they blabber, 'For the first time in my life, I'm blown away by an interactive book design.' But, the NYT counters, 'What I really love [about traditional books] is their inertness. No matter how I shake Alice's Adventures in Wonderland, mushrooms don't tumble out of the upper margin, unlike the Alice for the iPad.'"

6 of 149 comments (clear)

  1. Eh? by Securityemo · · Score: 2, Informative

    I can only speak for myself, but if you want to read a text, you read it? Any child should intuitively turn the illustrations off, or simply ignore them if they are distracting. Talking about the "pondering abstracted" reader or the "inertness" of books is just silly romanticism, text is text. And as a sidenote, I have ADD; I know the subject of distraction fairly well.

    --
    Emotions! In your brain!
    1. Re:Eh? by hedwards · · Score: 2, Informative

      I couldn't read for a number of years because books are not very well suited to the purposes of actual reading. Between the migraines and difficulty tracking lines on the page, it was pretty much a non-starter. At least with electronic books of various sorts there's ways around that. Whether by changing the spacing to be more appropriate or by making the portion of text stand out more as the page progresses automatically. Perhaps in the future even tracking eye movement to keep things in sync.

      There's always been and always will be a small minority of literature romanticists that insist that the way it was done was perfect, when in fact it was badly broken for a sizable portion of the populace and mostly served to create an elite. It's sort of like how somehow it's terrible to have books on tape, because you're being deprived of the serious discomfort of having to hold a book in an awkward position and risk the neck damage that encourages.

  2. Re:I want Textadventures! by Brandee07 · · Score: 4, Informative

    There are. http://www.amazon.com/gp/feature.html/ref=amb_link_86283691_14?ie=UTF8&docId=1000449691&pf_rd_m=ATVPDKIKX0DER&pf_rd_s=center-11&pf_rd_r=0RZ8W5BAKW1XS4XQ4DD3&pf_rd_t=101&pf_rd_p=1260058202&pf_rd_i=1268190011

  3. Translation by Dirtside · · Score: 3, Informative

    Translation: "It's new and different, and I'm frightened by it."

    --
    "Destroy science and religion. Science would re-emerge exactly the same; but not religion." - Penn Jillette, paraphrased
  4. Re:Ruining the purpose of reading? ABSOLUTELY! by quall · · Score: 2, Informative

    If that was a pun at my post then you should know that this site formatted it that way. It was full of paragraphs when I typed it out.

  5. Re:Ruining the purpose of reading? ABSOLUTELY! by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 2, Informative

    Should have selected Plain Old Text rather than HTML.

    You can set your default text layout in your preferences.