‘Child-safe e-books’
For the Sony, Kindle and iPhone platforms, as well as desktop machines, the L.A. Times has a few suggestions for parents looking for "child-safe e-books." Excerpt:
"You’re probably not going to want to get your kid his or her own Kindle, considering that the digital readers cost $359 and are currently on back order on Amazon.com. But you could get one for yourself and let your kid use it. You can get titles such as Kalli Dakos’ ‘Don’t Read This Book, Whatever You Do!’ for $4.99 and ‘The Railway Children’ by E. Nesbit for $2.50. The Reader costs a little less than the Kindle, but Sony charges more for the books: ‘Far-Flung Adventures: Hugo Pepper’ costs $13.49, just 10% off the cover price."
Detail: "Child-safe" refers to the lack of X-rated content. But what about another "safety" issue—the safety of the machine itself? Might a rugged laptop like the OLPC machine, shown above, be a possibility here? The International Children’s Digital Library could be one source of content.
Update by Chris Meadows: The L.A. Times followed up a couple of hours later with another article on how e-books are starting to catch on with children in general. It includes the example of Dr. Seuss books via KidThing which can feature animated characters or reading aloud.
With e-book revenue increasing in general, kids—who may be more gadget-prone than their parents—are seen as an especially viable market. However, some psychologists are concerned that children may be distracted by the gadgetry and thus not learn as well from e-books as regular books.
December 26th, 2008 at 8:30 am
Don’t forget to include ‘Huck Finn’ and all the other banned books…Harry Potter series books that promotes satanism and witchcraft…and any textbooks that espouse godless darwinism…
Censorship usually comes in the door advertising itself as ’safe for children’ (which used to be ’safe for women and children’ until women started asking to be treated as grownups). It then grows outward from there to include everything the censors don’t personally approve of.