Wednesday, September 14, 2011

Reading into the wee hours

More often than not my parenting posts end up being complaints or rants of one type or another.  Lest I be accused of not relishing the good parts of having a kid I present the following:


Elli has recently taken to staying up late with her lamp on reading her books.  She can puzzle out individual letters and a few words now but she can't really read the books yet.  Nonetheless she is happy spending hours poring over her collection - usually the Franklin books are her favourites for this activity but last night it was all Dora The Explorer all the time.

This has a huge amount of 'awww, how adorable!' attached to it for Wendy and I because both of us recall very vividly our childhood experiences of hiding books and lights from parents to stay up far later than we were allowed.  We hid under covers and stayed up into the wee hours to finish the latest tome we were addicted to and now our little one is falling asleep with her light on and her book in hand.


Eventually I will get to introduce her to my favourites though most likely she will end up enamoured of some terrible series that makes me cringe.  Just like I couldn't stop reading The Hardy Boys I assume there will be some silly fluff that makes me sigh but thrills her little heart.

3 comments:

  1. It makes me a bit sad to think that books may soon be replaced by tablets as a primary recreational reading source.

    I don't think for one second that people will stop buying paper, or that libraries will disappear (we still watch plays and listen to orchestras!), but there's something formative about interacting through flat text.

    Still, I'm very curious how it will affect future developmental patterns... will our collective attention spans decrease? Will our interactive problem-solving skills go through the roof?

    Onwards to the future!

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  2. Tablets will need to come down in price before they really put the pinch on libraries I think. I wouldn't mind having a tablet to read but I don't want to shell out for one - the library is free to me. With the constant price decreases of technology though I suspect eventually paper books just won't be competitive.

    The book Everything Bad is Good for You has some neat stuff to say on the topic. Not sure I buy all of its conclusions but I certainly believe a lot of them.

    http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Everything_Bad_Is_Good_for_You

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