>Kids and the Kindle

>I don't see it. While I'm having a fine enough time with the Kindle myself, I think its lack of a backlight and color, rudimentary display of pictures, and plethora of steps and button-pushing will cause most anyone under twenty-five to dismiss it as being for The Olds (and the really Olds, like me, who love the way you can create a large-type edition at the push of two buttons). But things don't look good for the long-term prospects of the device.

But take a look at this planned successor to the OLPC XO-1, the one-laptop-per-child machine. That's promising--and on the cheap, too. And has anyone read Neal Stephenson's The Diamond Age? Its heroine has the the ebook machine of my dreams.
Roger Sutton
Roger Sutton

Editor Emeritus Roger Sutton was editor in chief of The Horn Book, Inc., from 1996-2021. He was previously editor of The Bulletin of the Center for Children's Books and a children's and young adult librarian. He received his MA in library science from the University of Chicago in 1982 and a BA from Pitzer College in 1978.

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Posted : Jun 03, 2008 05:09


Anonymous

>see today's NYT on publishers' concern about KINDLE

Posted : Jun 02, 2008 05:14


Vanessa

>I love my kindle and so do many of my college age and teen friends! Its cool because it is nerdy, and nerdy is in.

Posted : May 24, 2008 12:08


Brian Floca

>The digital book work at Gralley’s site is interesting and original and worth the look, thanks. Still, and despite some strong early adapter tendencies, I’ll continue to favor paper, hands down. If the procrastination impulse was (even) stronger, I’d take the time to try to unravel those feelings. In the meantime I defer to and recommend William Power’s essay “Hamlet’s Blackberry: Why Paper is Eternal,” which makes an interesting argument for why physical paper, binding, and ink offer the best available technology, batteries or no, for at least some types of reading. Much in the essay is specifically about newspapers, but more broadly the essay takes apart and examines things we take for granted about how ink and paper and the brain and body work together. Readers can Google the essay and download the PDF. Then they can read it online (with irony) or print it out (without).

Posted : May 22, 2008 08:15


Susan

>It’s MCAS test taking time here in Massachusetts and my daughter told me this story last night: the kids aren’t allowed to have their cell phones or ipods or anything electronic with them while they take the test. But they are allowed to bring books to occupy them when they’re finished before they can go back to the regularly scheduled day. Anyway, yesterday one boy was completely distraught because the teacher wouldn’t believe he only read using his e-book device (not sure which one) and kept telling him that he’d just have to read a real book and he said he hated them and he kept losing them. The whole homeroom then got into a discussion of what exactly makes a book a real book, trying to get the teacher to let them use their ipods too. Oh, they're all 10th graders.

Posted : May 22, 2008 04:44


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