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moving my question to ask all parents - is it the technology or specifically books? do your kids use your ipad/computer for other things? I'm not a parent myse

moving my question to ask all parents - is it the technology or specifically books? do your kids use your ipad/computer for other things? I'm not a parent myself, but my nieces and nephews love the ipad. they stick to content made specifically for the device tho, they arent "e-reading" dr seuss.

frossie 15y ago
I have purchased and read to children e-books on both an e-ink device and an iPad, so perhaps I can make a few comments from experience. The main problem is that the quality of children's ebooks is very poor. Even chapter books for < 10yo (say The Magic Treehouse series) have extensive illustrations. I can't believe it is a limitation of e-PUB (after all, we seem to have graphic novels beautifully presented on the iPad), but illustrations in children's e-books are generally shoddy. Images are abominably low-res, non-zoomable and so on. There is a popular children's series called "Geronimo Stilton". It uses not only images but imaginative typography, for example: http://goo.gl/Md88y http://goo.gl/Md88y I bought an e-PUB of one of those books - the e-publisher's solution was to treat the ENTIRE page as one low-quality image. It was awful. It also cost as much as the actual book. Which brings us to pricing. There is no real saving in buying children's ebooks over the actual thing, and in fact with bookstore discounts the print is often cheaper. The article makes the good point that children receive many books as gifts, and of course there is a tactile pleasure with books to the point where I wouldn't expect 100% e-book penetration, but I certainly would purchase more children's e-books if the quality was acceptable. As for iPad-type interactive stories, they are really quite a different category. They are nice as a diversion, but their quality and quantity comes nowhere near 200 years of great children's storytelling.

frossie 15y ago

I have purchased and read to children e-books on both an e-ink device and an iPad, so perhaps I can make a few comments from experience. The main problem is that the quality of children's ebooks is very poor. Even chapter books for < 10yo (say The Magic Treehouse series) have extensive illustrations. I can't believe it is a limitation of e-PUB (after all, we seem to have graphic novels beautifully presented on the iPad), but illustrations in children's e-books are generally shoddy. Images are abominably low-res, non-zoomable and so on. There is a popular children's series called "Geronimo Stilton". It uses not only images but imaginative typography, for example: http://goo.gl/Md88y http://goo.gl/Md88y I bought an e-PUB of one of those books - the e-publisher's solution was to treat the ENTIRE page as one low-quality image. It was awful. It also cost as much as the actual book. Which brings us to pricing. There is no real saving in buying children's ebooks over the actual thing, and in fact with bookstore discounts the print is often cheaper. The article makes the good point that children receive many books as gifts, and of course there is a tactile pleasure with books to the point where I wouldn't expect 100% e-book penetration, but I certainly would purchase more children's e-books if the quality was acceptable. As for iPad-type interactive stories, they are really quite a different category. They are nice as a diversion, but their quality and quantity comes nowhere near 200 years of great children's storytelling.