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Why Beatrix Potter Would Love a Digital Reader
destinyland writes "In 1906, children's book author Beatrix Potter tried creating her own new, non-book format for delivering her famous fairy tales. 'Intended for babies and tots, the story was originally published on a strip of paper that was folded into a wallet, closed with a flap, and tied with a ribbon.' This article includes a link to actual images from one of Potter's strange wallet-sized stories — 'The Story of A Fierce, Bad Rabbit' — plus an image showing you exactly what Beatrix Potter thought 'a fierce, bad rabbit' would look like!"
I don't know about the kindle, but an iPhone doesn't seem to be too hard. I was at a theme park the other day and the guy in front of my was carrying a baby that couldn't talk yet. It was holding his iPhone and I watched the baby repeated slide-unlock his iPhone, then wait for it to reset, and hit the button and unlock it again. Granted, it didn't manage to get the slide-unlock every time. It took about 4 tries. But there was no doubt that the kid had a good handle on what it was doing.
"If you make people think they're thinking, they'll love you; But if you really make them think, they'll hate you." - DM
Oh Amazon! I may be a luddite but at least my books will still function after the collapse of civilization.
I know with my books I can bump them, drop them, get them wet (protip: freeze wet books so they dry out and don't puff up) and even SHARE them with other people. Sadly they're not fireproof.
With a kindle I have a single electronic gadget full of books that Amazon and publishers can recall at any time for any reason.
Beatrix Potter's book 'alternative', and calling it an alternative is quite a stretch but anything's possible if you pay off the right blogs, has all of the flexibility of the dead tree format and none of the drawbacks of some proprietary e-format laden with DRM.
She was being creative and nowhere near trying to introduce a new format which would supercede a content delivery system which has been proven over the course of centuries not a mere handful of years.
TFA talks about how Beatrix Potter would love the *Kindle*, not just any old reader. I think the author missed the fact that her watercolour illustrations include colour, something the Kindle can't do yet.
These people obviously dont have young children.
Young children dont *read* books, that is about the 5th to 6th use of them.
#1 is they eat books (chew on them whenever possible)
#2 is they use books as hammers (apparently hitting things with large flat objects is fun!)
#3 is they throw them the moment they are more than 5 inches above the ground
Can someone lend me a kindle (/ipad/whatever) and a stopwatch? I have an experiment in mind...
I suspect Ms.Potters idea was more about making books MORE disposable, not less (the foldups could be printed more cheaply, as no binding).