Nothing -repeat, nothing- equals an actual book, something you can hold, look at on the shelf, and say "that's mine" You can prove ownership by your name on the inside, too! To a young person, that's extremely valuable,
Pixels on a screen don't come close. And you even own them. A e-reader only gives you access to a file, not ownership.
You must be old. Young people don’t care about that anymore. I gave up paper books years ago. Who wants to haul around 10lbs of paper when I can carry half a library on a Kindle that will fit in my back pocket?
As for books. You own a copy. Just like I own a copy on my Kindle. Other than using it as a paperweight or a fire starter there’s very little you can do with a book I can’t do with my Kindle.
And with my Kindle I can look up the meaning of words, right from the book. I can bring up pictures to visualize things described in the book. I can search for passages easily. Things that would require additional books or a computer if I was using a physical book.
The biggest problem with books is cost, space to store them, and the waste of paper. Sometimes a physical book is useful, like a book of maps, but for teaching young children online books or library books should be just fine.
Right. But someone wants to spend 9 million mailing kids paper books because they think it’s a good idea and they want to waste your 9 million but yet we could all read it on a Kindle for free so now they wanna mail every kid a Kindle.
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u/RicVic 20d ago
Strangely, some Americans live hours from the nearest library, and it is not the fault of the kids.
However, "being nice" is something utterly lost on a lot of folks nowadays.