What's Happening to Reading?

(Photo by ridolfo on Flickr.com)

A while back (so far back, I may have already posted and forgotten about it), a NY Times article raised the question of whether an e-book was still a book.

A mere five months later, the paper ran an article about how a major publisher was working with a multimedia partner to produce four vooks (or e-books that have videos embedded within the text), with other publishers expressing an interest in doing the same. The production of multimedia books was expected to rise.

Now, a recent article from The Washington Post asks the following question: How will the proliferation of multimedia books affect reading? And will all this lead inevitably to the novel's demise?

Hey, it's no accident that vooks are largely being produced for children--the next generation of readers. Or are they readers?

Reading a text-only book requires one to pay attention and use something called the imagination. Along with the usual hand-wringing about sapping our imaginations, the article raises the all-too-familiar specter of diminishing attention spans.

Why do I get the feeling they were saying things like this when movies and television were invented? And as for those doomsday scenarios about attention spans, anyone remember the hubbub about Sesame Street? I mean, hello!

Despite the video games, iPhones, TV, Internet and other competition for their attention, kids still read. (Just ask J.K. Rowling and Lemony Snicket.) And the idea of using visuals in children's books is hardly new.

I suspect we'll all look back on this stuff one day and laugh.