Comment on YSK: Little Free Library is a group that promotes local access to books on a more micro level, to build a stronger community of readers across the world

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derfunkatron@lemmy.world ⁨1⁩ ⁨day⁩ ago

It’s widely accepted among pediatricians and psychologists that you should delay introducing your kids to screens as long as possible. We started reading to our kid when they were a newborn and there is no way in hell that I would be blasting them with a tablet screen (children’s ebooks tend to be pdfs because of all the graphics, which also rules out using e-ink readers). Reading to a child is also a pre-bedtime activity in low light where stimuli should be reduced; a tablet or e-reader is far from ideal here.

A lot of children’s books in the 0-4 range are also tactile, include lift-the-flaps, have mirrors or noisemakers, and are safe to chew on. The other thing is that in order to teach independence, the kid needs to be able to access and choose books on their own which is something a physical books and a shelf is really good at and an e-reader is really bad at.

One may argue that physical books are expensive, impractical, or whatever, but there are several organizations that send free books monthly to kids (we are subscribed to two of them). Public libraries are really good for exposing kids to books that don’t have to be purchased as well as teaching additional skills like:

And to your earlier point about physical books being “a novelty of the past,” I would counter by saying that physical books and ebooks are not a binary pair and using them to read is not an exclusive or (the exception being children’s books).

At the end of the day, the medium you use to read is a preference and I am a strong advocate for audiobooks, ebooks, and physical books being simultaneously available. What I am not an advocate for, is the dismissal of the print on physical media as if it is not one of the most stable and easily accessible methods for communication. No matter how you argue it, at the end of the day, ebooks and audiobooks still require mediation and energy. Those formats also impose technical and financial barriers to access (you may be savvy enough to access thousands of books for free and maintain your own e-reader that respects your privacy, but the majority of people to whom e-books are marketed to cannot). I can lend or give away a physical book to anyone I meet and they can immediately read it; the same cannot be said for digitally reformatted texts.

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