If you have Kids or Grandkids...Can you Help me out here?

[alcibiades_mystery]

21. I have a 6 year old and a 3 year old

Both read paper books. A lot of them. Well, the three year old doesn't read, but he loves paper hold-in-your-hand books. Listen, I'm not Mr. Nostalgia. I like the changing medium of the book, and I like the possibilities it opens up. I like the Internet, and what we can do with it, and I find much of the bemoaning of the "death of books" to be reactionary claptrap. But I like books. I think you can do things with a long paper novel - that such a piece of communication forces particular modes of thought - that you can't do with the internet, the e-readers, or any of that stuff. Not because of its "tangibility" or anything so trivial, but because it is a particular encounter with a particular material medium that inflects the forms of language and communication that can be accomplished through it. There's value in the long paper book. There's value in the short teevee interview. There's value in the hypertext novel, or the - dare I say it - internet forum posting, or tweet, or whatever. They are merely different forms of expression that constrain and make possible different kinds of acts of writing and reading and speaking and playing and drawing and whatever. Neither bad nor good, but different.