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Death of the book?
Mar. 30th, 2014 10:55 amWe took children of 4 and very nearly 2 to London and back by train yesterday (with apologies to all those whose heart sinks when a child enters their railway carriage, but how are they to learn how to behave in public if they're not meant to leave the house until they're 18? And whilst these days mine are reasonably well behaved, I once did have the three month old baby who screamed all the way from Norwich to London and refused any comfort. Sometimes babies scream, and sometimes you just can't stop them screaming. Moreover, the expression of blank indifference on the face of the mother in question may well be produced by a combination of not having had more than two hours continuous sleep at any point in the past six months, and the onset of vicious postnatal depression. Judge not...).
Apart from the usual seat reservation woes (honestly, you book two adult and two child tickets with a family railcard, you specifically request table seats, so you get two separated blocks of two airline seats. Fortunately, both times we could swap) it went fairly well. Two things struck me though. One is that the vast majority of travelling readers I saw were reading paper books (I had my Kindle, because Barchester Towers is a lot lighter on that than even my very cheap paperback). The second is that when we read books to the children, every other child in earshot turned round to listen, putting down their various electronic devices.
I am not going to harrumph about giving a child a tablet. If we could afford one for the family I'd buy it in a heartbeat, because with carefully selected contents it would be a brilliant tool for child entertainment on long journeys, and might let us indulge in small luxuries like drinking coffee while it is still hot or looking out of the window and daydreaming for five minutes. But those who wail of the death of books, a generation who will never read for pleasure, could perhaps put down their keyboards, and try actually reading to a nearby child. Possibly even from a screen, because today my shoulder is rather suffering from the weight of picture books in my bag. The only thing that will kill books is not reading them (to adapt Martin Carthy on folk song).
Apart from the usual seat reservation woes (honestly, you book two adult and two child tickets with a family railcard, you specifically request table seats, so you get two separated blocks of two airline seats. Fortunately, both times we could swap) it went fairly well. Two things struck me though. One is that the vast majority of travelling readers I saw were reading paper books (I had my Kindle, because Barchester Towers is a lot lighter on that than even my very cheap paperback). The second is that when we read books to the children, every other child in earshot turned round to listen, putting down their various electronic devices.
I am not going to harrumph about giving a child a tablet. If we could afford one for the family I'd buy it in a heartbeat, because with carefully selected contents it would be a brilliant tool for child entertainment on long journeys, and might let us indulge in small luxuries like drinking coffee while it is still hot or looking out of the window and daydreaming for five minutes. But those who wail of the death of books, a generation who will never read for pleasure, could perhaps put down their keyboards, and try actually reading to a nearby child. Possibly even from a screen, because today my shoulder is rather suffering from the weight of picture books in my bag. The only thing that will kill books is not reading them (to adapt Martin Carthy on folk song).
