REMEMBER BOOKS? By S. Roy Stevenson

     
     

The media, it seems, has fallen in love with Kindles and hail these devices as cost effective alternatives to books.  Not surprisingly, school administrators are starting to consider large scale purchases of Kindles or one of the other brands that are now in the marketplace to replace aging text books, novels, and anthologies.

      It makes sense from a strictly economic viewpoint; in the long term they are cheaper than traditional books.  And think of the space you'll save on your bookshelves!? 

      But aren't we paying a different kind of price if we enter into a world where books are merely electronic devices?  There's something special about a book; the way it feels in your hands; the sound it makes when you turn a page; even its smell.  I would argue that the physical experience of reading a book is an important part of the act of reading itself. 

 

For me it's part of the pleasure.     Please don't misunderstand; I am far from being a Luddite.  In fact I'm writing this very blog on a laptop and I celebrate the advent of online publishing for being something of a Trojan horse, bringing an abundance of new authors to the marketplace by penetrating the once insular walls of corporations and agents that controlled what we were able to read.  But there is nothing like a book and I fear that as time goes on and as electronic devices grow cheaper and school budgets become tighter, we will see fewer traditional books in our classrooms.  Let's hope not.  In the mean time I urge you to keep building traditionalists in your classrooms by giving students time to touch and read books. And then maybe, just maybe, we'll prevent the libraries of today from becoming the museums of tomorrow.