People involved with children's literature often express concerns that children’s reading and children’s books generally are declining or will decline under the onslaught of new forms of entertainment – video games, computer images, etc.  But the new media may just represent different (not inherently inferior or superior) ways of organizing knowledge and narrative for readers. Note that video games, for instance, which are often seen in opposition to reading, in fact have a strong narrative content. Because they allow “readers” a say in the form that narrative takes, games may actually present a more complex understand-ing of the nature of “story” than traditional printed narratives – perhaps more like the interaction of teller and audience in oral storytelling.
        The package is, in many cases, less important than the content, and electronic packages have one advantage: they present books in a form many young people are very comfortable with.  E.g., Heppermann describes a plan to offer Palm Pilot e-versions of publishers’ books: “Who would bother straining their eyes staring at text and graphics on such a tiny screen, I scoffed at first.  Then I thought, Oh yeah, I know who: practically everyone over age five and under age fourteen.” (687)
         And young people are accustomed to playing on computers, so might be more likely to embrace electronic books than adults who associate computers with work (Heppermann 688).  E.g., visit the children’s room of the library and watch kids working with the CD-ROMs of The Magic School Bus. They play games and determine which links to follow, but in the process absorb much of the content desired by the authors.  The first time my daughter “played the game,” the librarian commented to me that she had gone through from beginning to end, the first time she’d ever seen a child do that.
         That’s both the strength and the weakness of electronic formats.  For many nonfiction uses, electronic sources may serve as well or better than books (Carter 698).  But virtual books are both more and less structured than ordinary books.  Links in hypertext are determined by the creator; however numerous they may be, they result from conscious choices of what to link and what not to link, so they tend to be related to content. You go from one site to another one with a similar topic, rather than true serendipity you can get browsing in a library or a bookstore. On the other hand, information in individual books may be structured much more cohesively than is possible electronically, where the reader determines the path depending on which links are followed: “Every time youngsters jump from one hyperlink to another, they become more removed from the organizing principles that defined the original site.” (Carter 701-02)
        Electronic storage of information also makes sense in terms of ordinary books; as Heppermann points out, “Some traditionally published children’s books, believe it or not, make more sense in the print-on-demand world of digital publishing.” (691-92)  In particular, that might be a preferred alternative to stocks of essentially throw-away series books which currently glut bookstore shelves, and digital publishing can keep good books available when it would be economically unfeasible to keep them in print.

    “Ink on paper is not essential.  The codex is not irreplaceable.  It’s what’s in the ‘book’ that matters.  Will In the Night Kitchen or Tuck Everlasting still be wonderful in another form?  Tuck Everlasting? I think so.  Night Kitchen? This is more problematic.  Attempts to convert stories conceived and designed for a thirty-two page paper format to images on a screen will result in sometimes more and sometimes less successful hybrids – in effect, translations.  But new stories will be conceived for new formats.  Story will survive books.” (Roxburgh 656-57)

A. Waller Hastings
Professor of English
Northern State University
Aberdeen, SD  57401

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