Class: Reading 3B
Summary
The New York Times
November 20, 2011
Article: “For Their Children, Many E-Book Fans
Insist on Paper”
By MATT RICHTEL and JULIE BOSMAN
By MATT RICHTEL and JULIE BOSMAN
In the November 20, 2011, The New
York Times Article, “For Their Children, Many E-Book Fans Insist on Paper”,
authors, Matt Richtel, and Julie Bosman, discuss the persistence of traditional
paper books in the children’s segment of the book market in the digital age. The
article begins with the assertion that print books are suffering a decline
thanks to the increasing market share of e-books.
The authors give data that contends
that while more than 25 percent of adult books are purchased in digital format,
more than 95 percent of children’s books continue to be purchased as traditional
print books. They go on to suggest that this is a statistically significant
difference even going so far as to suggest that print books may be all but
extinct by the time the current child readers reach the age of majority. To
emphasize the point, the authors discuss cases studies in which the parents are
avid book downloaders. Even among this population, the article suggests that
print books dominate the books purchased for their children.
Given this discrepancy, the authors
spend time discussing probable causes for the buying behavior of the parents.
They opine that factors such as tradition, intimacy, tactile feedback and
flexibility cause parents to cling to the practice of purchasing print books
for their children.
The article concludes by arguing
that the book itself, in addition to the words that it contains, can be a part
of the learning and imagination building experience intended from reading to
children. Paradoxically, they cite the distractions that a multifunctional
electronic book reader might cause when using it to read to a child. Despite
the potential for educational applications to be more interactive in the
process of teaching children to read, the parents cited contend that the
distractions of the device would outweigh the benefits.
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