Do books have a future?

It’s interesting to think about a holiday season with no books. I’m talking about the traditional book, and picture books in particular.

When I read a recent Newsweek (opens in a new window) article about Jeff Bezo’s Amazon Kindle — the newest generation of the e-book — well, it gave me pause. Will it replace the traditional book — a practically perfect device as the piece states?

We know that children from 0 to 6 are already media savvy. In fact, research (opens in a new window) indicates that young children actually spend more time in front of screens (television, computer, etc.) than playing outdoors. Reading comes in a distant third.

I’m not sure I’d want to cuddle up with a child and a Kindle (or any other e-book for that matter), but it sure is an interesting thought. Jean Gralley (opens in a new window), an illustrator and author of children’s books thinks that picture books can reside in an electronic medium.

Can technology encourage reading (opens in a new window)? It’s been suggested that it can — and I suppose that makes sense. One has to be literate to use technology, right? And decodingThe ability to translate a word from print to speech by using your knowledge of sound–symbol (letter) correspondences. pictures — as pre-readers do — is not totally dissimilar to decoding words, is it?

Let me know what you think of e-books, digital picture books, and where these changes may lead to. I’ll keep thinking about it…but THIS holiday season, it’ll be traditional format of books for me.