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the November/December 2008 issue of The Horn Book Magazine Although Amazon.com’s Kindle is not the first handheld electronic device that has tried to create an audience for digital books, its high-profile debut has prompted a great deal of talk (and a good deal of thinking) about the future of reading in an increasingly screen-based world. We asked three children’s book colleagues — a publisher, a self-described “computer geek,” and a teacher — to share some of their initial impressions of What It All Might Mean. R.S.
Stephen Roxburgh is the founder of Front Street Books.
As a publisher of children’s books and a
children’s literature blogger, I was curious about the potential
of these devices for young readers as well. I set out to learn more
about the new E-books have been around at least since 1971, when Michael Hart digitized the Declaration of Independence and created Project Gutenberg, a free online repository of public domain books in electronic format. For almost that long, people have been predicting that e-books would eventually replace the printed book. But so far, the e-book revolution hasn’t happened: it’s true that e-book sales have been increasing, but it’s been an evolutionary, rather than a revolutionary, process, and most people still prefer to read books on paper. Handheld computers and sophisticated cell phones were a step forward in making e-books a viable option. Their portability and ubiquity makes them a natural for carrying around books to read. There’s a devoted cadre of readers who use their PDAs and other handhelds for reading e-books; Palm even has its own proprietary e-book format. But many people find reading a book on the small screen of such devices difficult, and bright sunlight can make some LCD displays hard to read. That’s where the new generation of e-book readers comes in. These may look like something between a tablet PC and a handheld, but they’re actually very different. To start with, the thing that looks like a screen isn’t really a screen, at least not like any screen currently in use. Instead, the e-book readers use a technology called electronic ink or electronic paper. Imagine a sheet of paper covered with dots of ink that can change color, and you’re approaching the idea behind electronic ink. It consists of millions of tiny microcapsules, each containing white particles and black particles. By applying an electronic charge to the microcapsules, you cause either the white particles or the black particles in each capsule to rise to the top, depending on whether the charge was positive or negative. Reverse the charge, and the opposite color rises to the top. When a sheet of film laminated with electronic circuitry is then coated with the electronic ink, the result is something resembling a sheet of paper with an image that can be changed into infinite arrangements of black, white, and grays. Reading an electronic paper display is closer to
the experience of reading ink on paper than any other electronic
technology currently in use. Like paper, electronic ink is an opaque,
reflective surface requiring no backlighting, viewable in a wide
range of lighting conditions and from any angle. With a high-resolution
display and no emitted light, the electronic ink display causes
There are currently three major e-readers available in the United States: Amazon’s Kindle, Sony’s Reader, and iRex Technologies’ iLiad. All three have an electronic ink display, but each is implemented very differently. I tried them out to compare their strengths and weaknesses and to assess how they would fare as a regular replacement for books. I was able to use the iLiad for a few weeks, which gave me the opportunity to give it a more thorough evaluation. I spent about an hour each with the Kindle and the Sony Reader. The iLiad was very easy to set up and use; within minutes of taking it out of the box I was reading books on it. In fact, iRex Technologies has such faith in the ease of use that the users’ guide is an e-book on the iLiad itself; the only printed documentation is a one-page quick start guide. Reading books on the iLiad is fairly simple. A button clearly labeled “Books” takes you to the list of selections. Up and down arrow keys move through the list to choose which book you want to read. Even before looking at the quick start guide I could see that you turn pages by toggling a long vertical bar running up the left side of the unit. Unfortunately, some of the advanced functions are not so easy to figure out, and the users’ guide was necessary to move beyond the basics. A row of icons along the bottom was difficult to decipher, and some functions, such as deleting a book from the unit, were not intuitive. The iLiad comes with a stylus that can be used to draw on the page or to annotate books — a nice feature for those who like to make notes in the margins. The iLiad is the only e-reader with this capability, which would be particularly useful for students. When I tried the Amazon Kindle, I was surprised by how much I liked it. From the pictures I had seen, I was convinced I would hate it; its retro design is, to my eye, quite ugly, and the keyboard takes up too much space — the whole bottom third of the device — leaving it with a smaller display area. However, at 10.3 ounces, it’s lighter than the iLiad, which weighs 15.3 ounces. It’s also smaller than the iLiad and fits comfortably in your hand. The Kindle is easy to use, and the placement of the page-turning buttons makes it easy to turn pages with either hand. Unfortunately, it’s also a bit too easy to accidentally turn a page when picking up the Kindle or putting it in a backpack. The Kindle did feel less solidly made than the iLiad. That could account in part for the price difference: the Kindle is (currently) $359, compared to $599 for the cheapest iLiad. The Kindle also displays only four levels of gray, compared to the iLiad’s sixteen levels. The iLiad’s extra shades of gray should make a big difference in the perceived quality of images displayed. And the Kindle doesn’t have the iLiad’s ability to mark up books with a stylus, although the keyboard does allow you to make notes. The Kindle’s real strength is in its access to and selection of books. The Kindle includes free wireless access to Amazon’s new Whispernet network, and through the network you have immediate access to (at this writing) over 150,000 books from Amazon’s collection. Of these, there appear to be slightly over 3,500 children’s and young adult titles available for the Kindle. You can use the Kindle to find books on Amazon and download them wherever you happen to be. You can also subscribe to newspapers and have them automatically land in your digital lap. In comparison, there are around 50,000 books available in Mobipocket format for the iLiad, of which about 1,000 are juvenile fiction and about 400 are juvenile nonfiction. Until recently, Sony Reader users had access to only about 20,000 books in Sony’s proprietary format, but this past summer Sony announced that it will be supporting the new EPUB standard for e-books, as well as additional support for e-books in Adobe format. This move vastly increases the selection of books available for the Sony Reader and makes it a much more viable candidate in the e-reader market. Weighing in at only 9 ounces, the Sony Reader is the smallest and lightest of the three. At 6.9 inches by 4.8 inches, it’s roughly the size of a mass-market paperback, fits comfortably in one hand, and slips neatly into a pocketbook. It’s elegantly designed and easy to use. It displays eight levels of gray, placing it between the Kindle’s four and the iLiad’s sixteen. The photographs that I viewed on the Sony Reader looked acceptably clear. The only design flaw I found is that the size and placement of the page-turning buttons makes it difficult to read with one hand. At $299, the Sony Reader is currently the least expensive of the three. Overall, I found reading on all three e-readers to be a pleasant experience. The electronic paper display was, indeed, easy on the eyes, and the ability to change the font size allowed me to customize the display. It was a convenient way to carry multiple books with me at all times and switch between them at will; all the e-readers remember where you left off in a book and start you at the correct page when you return to it. On all three, there is a slight delay on the page turns; it takes about a second for the display to update. I didn’t find it bothersome, but my husband perceived it as an annoying flicker. He reads faster than I do, though, so I suspect that the delay is so slight that younger children who are slower readers will probably not be bothered by it. However, older children and teens who are fast readers may initially find it distracting. Using the e-book reader, I did find that I missed the form of a printed book more than I thought I would. On an e-book reader, every book has a generic, monotonous look. Centuries of accumulated experience in book design go into the creation of print books, and the book you hold in your hands sets up your expectations in many subtle ways, from the cover design and the size of the book to the interior typeface and font size. You may not notice the interior design, but a well-designed book affects how you react to it. While you can change the font size (making e-readers an excellent alternative to the often hard to find large-print books), these devices use the same typeface for every title, giving all the books a sameness in appearance that left me feeling cut off from the visual cues I’ve come to expect. This is particularly true in books for children and teens, where things like font size and spacing are usually optimized for the target age range. I’m not the only one attached to the printed
book. I conducted an informal survey on an Internet discussion board
dedicated to literature. The respondents were teens and preteens,
mostly between the ages of twelve and fourteen, who love to read
and are comfortable with technology. Most thought that the e-book
readers sounded cool, but a remarkable number of them said they
would miss printed books. Some like to display their favorite books
on a shelf in their room, and others like to collect autographed
copies from their favorite authors. Some said that they just like
the feel of holding a book. One said, “I don’t think
I would buy one even if it didn’t cost anything. I like holding
a book in my hands, and I don’t know, I like the feeling of
owning a complete series of something like Warriors.” Another
said, “It wouldn’t give me nearly the same sense of
gratification that reading normal books does . . .
Not to mention that paper smells good, especially that in old books.”
These young people, savvy in twenty-first- E-readers will continue to change and evolve over the next few years, and those changes will make e-books more appealing. E Ink Corporation has already demonstrated a prototype of a new version of electronic ink, with color display and faster switching speeds. Products containing these new enhancements should be on the market within the next few years. At the same time, advances in e-book file formats and software will allow publishers to use typography and other design elements while still retaining the flexibility needed for e-books. Hopefully, advances in technology will reduce the prices of e-book readers as well. In the longer term, there’s no reason why e-book readers have to look and feel like a tablet computer. E Ink Corporation is working to develop flexible e-ink displays, even displays that can be rolled like paper. Once that happens, the format of future e-book readers is limited only by the imagination. A device could be made in the form of a book, for example, with an electronic paper cover and spine, and electronic paper interior pages that could be turned like the pages of a printed book. When you wanted to read a different book, the cover and interior pages could all be changed with the touch of a button. Esquire is making history as the first print magazine to incorporate an E Ink display in one of its issues; the October 2008 issue had a two-page E Ink advertisement embedded in the magazine. As another alternative, an animation on E Ink Corporation’s website shows a pen-like device with a scroll of electronic paper that can be rolled out to read and retracted into the pen to store it. A new e-reading device, the Readius, has been announced for a 2009 release in the United States. The Readius will have a flexible E Ink display that unfolds out of a container the size of a cell phone. Is it possible that the scroll will make a comeback over fifteen hundred years after the codex replaced it as the dominant form for written works? Whatever form e-readers take in the future, their development bears watching. There will probably always be a place for printed books; many people will continue to prefer them, at least for the foreseeable future, and some books, such as art books, graphic novels, and children’s picture books — not to mention pop-up books — will probably always be popular in printed format. But as more people become accustomed to electronic books, and as the technology evolves to make e-books more appealing, the e-book revolution might just happen after all. Sheila Ruth is a children’s book publisher and blogger specializing in YA fantasy and science fiction, and administrator of the Wands and Worlds teen fan community.
As a middle-school language arts teacher, I work
with a generation of students who were born into digital nirvana,
and I figured the Kindle would make their day, too. As soon as my
personal I started with one of my favorite Amazon features: the ability to browse books from anywhere and download sample chapters of almost any title. Sitting on my couch one afternoon, I found about twenty young adult novels that I knew would motivate my students, and I added their sample chapters to my Kindle. None of the titles that I downloaded are currently on my classroom bookshelf, yet they are all hot topics in the cafeteria and at the bus stop. In a matter of minutes, I’d found a way to give my students access to teasers for titles that may feed their personal reading needs. The greatest reward has been watching students read the sample chapters on my Kindle and then line up at the library to sign out the actual books. Oh, yeah — and all of this was free and easy. Not a bad deal for a cash-strapped, time-crunched public school teacher. Next, students signed up to use my Kindle during
our daily silent reading time. Their response to exploring digital
titles was nothing short of overwhelming. About eighty percent of
my My students mastered the Kindle with little difficulty. I can literally hand the device to a twelve-year-old, show them where the power switch is, and walk away. Having spent the majority of their lifetimes figuring out new digital devices, my students aren’t intimidated by the Kindle at all. They quickly figure out where the home button is and intuitively work the roller ball mouse. Making selections and turning pages is second nature to digital natives. And almost every kid digs digital books, even though their reasons vary. Connor — who isn’t naturally drawn to reading — got a bit of a confidence boost from the variable text-size options available. “I love how you can make the text bigger,” he said. “It makes me feel like I’m reading a ton. I like turning more pages every time I read.” For Maria — who probably churns through three books a week — immediate access to new titles was amazing. “After finishing a book in a place quite far away from a library,” she wrote, “what are you supposed to do? What if there is nothing else to do? What then? With a Kindle, however, you could just download a book in a matter of minutes and continue to read. Convenience is one of the best things about a Kindle.” Easily the most attractive feature of digital books for my students is the idea of never seeing another textbook. Susan wrote, “Kindles would be way better than carrying around book bags full of textbooks. Instead, you can carry around a Kindle and you wouldn’t even need a bag. Don’t you think it would make life easier?” As a teacher and a taxpayer, I’m even more jazzed by the potential of electronic texts, considering how much our district spends on new textbooks that are outdated within months. I can’t wait for the day when electronic book readers carry texts that are automatically updated with accurate content every time the device is turned on. I was surprised to find out, however, that my kids weren’t completely sold on digital reading. In fact, many of them were passionate in the belief that “real” reading required a paper copy. Consider Leigh’s thoughts: “The idea of a small device holding all of my favorite books is obscene . . . A book, to me, should be held dearly and thought of as a portal to a new and unseen world. I like to hold a book, feel its paperback or glossy cover and read until daylight blooms from my window.” “I very much enjoy the physical feeling of turning a page . . . of feeling suspense build because all of one page’s mysteries are answered in the next page . . . whereas in a Kindle, you click ‘Next.’ It’s a dishonor to authors everywhere!” Alison agreed. “I like the feeling of a crisp page on my fingertips. I love turning the page and thinking, ‘Wow!’ Whether it’s old-fashioned or not, I’m going to stick to the old-school, smudge-on-the-paper type books. I just don’t think I’m ready for the twenty-first-century kind yet!” But in the end, my Kindle has been a classroom blessing. It’s allowing me to motivate reluctant readers and to give my students access to a wider collection of titles than I could provide on my own. I’m sure I’ll find more ways to “Kindle-fy” reading time in my room — and I’m sure my students will become less averse to digital books. Right or wrong, they might not have a choice. After all, digital reading is probably here to stay. Bill Ferriter is currently teaching sixth-grade language arts and social studies at Salem Middle School in Apex, North Carolina. He writes frequently about his experiences with tools for twenty-first-century learning on his blog, The Tempered Radical.
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love my Kindle (and most other mechanical and digital gadgets),
but let’s step away from the hardware. And, for the moment,
let’s not engage in the “death of the book as we know
it” debate. Technology is the means to an end, and not necessarily
the end of a means. Think about the fact that people still walk,
bicycle, ride horses, drive cars, take trains, and fly to get where
they are going. When we read, we have a goal in mind. We are going
somewhere. One model of reading suggests that it is a process of
decoding the surface structure of words to get to their deep semantic
structure — i.e., their meaning. The more experienced we are
as readers, the more transparent that process becomes. We lose our
awareness of the process and immediately engage the meaning. In
other words, we just go there. In Star Trekian terms, we
are instantly transported, “beaming up” from one place
to emerge in another. Once you enter J. R. R. Tolkien’s Middle-earth,
or Daphne du Maurier’s Manderley, or Anthony Trollope’s
Barchester, or T. S. Eliot’s Waste Land, you are unconscious
of the mechanism that got you there. Once you know the stock price
of Microsoft, or the definition of peregrination, or the
atomic weight of molybdenum, or Genghis Khan’s birth date,
you know it. How you got it is incidental. So, the crux of the matter
is where you want to go. Why are you going there? How quickly do
you need to get there? Are you going to hang around for a while?
Will you be going back? What’s the cost of the trip? I’ll
hang on to my Folio Club edition of Middlemarch, my tattered
paperback of Four Quartets, my Uncle Scrooge comic books,
my laptop, my iTouch, and my Kindle. If you think about it, all
media and all mechanisms have a place in the universe of meaning
— and isn’t it neat that we have so many ways to get
around in it?
s
a reader who generally has multiple books in progress at any given
time, I can see the advantages of a device with a paperlike display
and the ability to hold hundreds of books. I carry two or three
books everywhere, in case I change my mind about what I want to
read that day, and packing for a trip generally requires a small
suitcase full of books, for fear I might run out of reading material.
There’s a new generation of e-book readers on the market that
would allow me to replace that suitcase with a device no bigger
than a trade paperback. 
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