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Comment by benologist | Hacker News Reader

I would like to add one other small question for a soon to be 3 year old, how to encourage books over tech?

As a new parent I quickly learned that kids emulate what they see (and they seem to pay more attention that we give them credit for) In an effort to prove this out my wife and I got library cards and started reading books during my daughter's (alone) play time after dinner. Very soon after this experiment started she too started picking books and now likes to read (recite from memory) her bed-time books.

This is the only answer, in my opinion. I was in the kitchen using google to set my alarms to time the oven, and by that evening she was taking her tablet and saying "Ok google".... Now I'm buying a kitchen timer

Father of a 4 year old boy here. The way you encourage reading, it seems to me, is to read books to your child and read your own books. If there's a micro-culture of literacy in your home, it's easy. A good time to read to your child is right before bedtime. It also helps with bedtime by easing the child into going to bed as a positive routine (instead of child feeling "I have to stop doing [thing child enjoys] because it's bedtime.")

Do you really think there is an advantage to books over tech? I tend to think most people are attached to books for nostalgic reasons.

I believe there are definitely advantages. The one that comes to mind is that physical books tend to offer fewer distractions than tech, encouraging focus on one thing (at least for me).

There's an emphasis on words and stories with books that's difficult to emulate fully with tech. I talk extensively with my son about what we read, and about what he does on the ipad. Those conversations are similar, but qualitatively different as well.

There are also some physical skills that kids develop from learning to turn pages, and handle books.

Books and devices are going to be around for a long time. Kids who develop appropriate fluency with both are going to be in a better position to make sense of their world.

How many pixels of resolution and what latency of screen refresh does your imagination offer? That's what stories offer - a personalized virtual reality with higher resolution than all current tech. Books are a delivery mechanism for stories. Poems offer even more - the brain fills in the blanks.

Books and poetry? Seems constricting, why not just put your kids in a float tank and let them have free run of their imaginations without the constrictions of words and thoughts of other people. How else will they free themselves of societies biases, man? ಠ_ಠ

Your approach seems almost like saying never take a kid on a trip to the grand canyon or show them a picture or video of it, when you can read them a poem or stage an interpretive dance about the grand canyon instead.

The comparison was books vs. tech, not books vs. reality.

Banning is a poor substitute for discretion.

Each have their use cases/advantages. & Im not sure that people cling to print solely due to nostalgia/habit.

We have just returned to the UK after three years in a small country that had hardly a bookshop, where we've been relying on ebooks.

First day in UK we took our 5yo to Hamleys (Toy Shop) and Foyles (book shop). It was a revelation to her. But I can't tell you how enthused we all were by the variety and quality of print books.

For me the ebook/interactive app doesn't really offer yet the immersive experience of print (especially for childrens books). Even for technical books/literature, I find it difficult to get wrapped up in an ebook (perhaps because there are so many distractions a swipe away).

I like the physical collection you can have with books. Ebooks don't really fulfill that. Also, new books smell awesome.

simply to have the brain be more active than passive and stimulate imagination.

But this is a free world and everyone to feel what they think is correct. Reading education and brain development materials could help deciding on what is good or not.

Parent of a 7yo and an almost 3yo with no TV at home, no computer time at all, and few iphone screen-time: only screen time is during long flights to Europe or somewhere else, road trips or when they are really sick. And the few screen time is always watching something in their second language (primary is English) as we're raising them bilingual. Again, this is our decision and this is a free world.

Why? because we feel that encouraging imagination development is key for their future as an adult being artistic or more technical. As adults we are constantly using our imagination for thinking out of the box, reaching far in our imagination for creating new solutions, etc.

No judging here and everyone can have is own point of view; and at the end who knows who is right or wrong? My only advice would be for the parents to educate themselves more on brain development and use their own judgement when reading such materials (often really opinionated).

I wonder if you can have a favorite e-book the same way you can have a favorite physical book? My favorite books I read multiple times, they have become worse for wear, I know every wrinkle I made while reading it, and, while reading it, it just feels right in my hands. I don't have that with e-books. Yes, the content is the same, but I am less able to form an attachment to a virtual copy than I am to a physical copy. Somehow, the holistic experience of reading a physical book versus reading an e-book on a e-book reader is different, although the actual content in both manifestations is the same. Maybe I am old-fashioned, but books and series I care about more, I still get physical copies. For my light reading, however, I'm fine with e-books.

Kids get distracted easily. With a book, there are no buttons to distract them.

Since our daughter was three, we have read aloud to each other every night. Like others in this thread, we don't have a TV. When she was younger, she would sometimes draw or play with Playmobil while we read, but still we would always read together. When she became old enough, we would pass the book around and each read a bit. She would typically read one or two pages, a "reading sacrifice," while one of us would finish the chapter. She is now 10. We still read to each other every night, and she herself has become a voracious reader as well as an enthusiastic writer, using google docs to collaborate with friends and share with family and teachers. She reads chapters of her favorite books or her own writing aloud to us. She has her own laptop computer (chromebook to dual-boot linux for Minecraft), which I think she uses responsibly. When she goes online to chat with friends or play on a Minecraft server, she tells us where she's going. Just as we'd want to know if she's visiting a friend's house, we want to know who she's spending time with online. Ditching the TV (who needs it?) and replacing it with family reading has been wonderful for all of us.

There are so many great books that are enjoyable for young and old alike. It will of course depend on your and your child's proclivities, but our favorites over the years have included: The Wizard of Oz books (all 12 volumes, some of which are quite dark, except Ozma's birthday; blech); The Ramayana (seriously); Winnie the Pooh; Stuart Little; Narnia; Hobbit; Sherlock Holmes; Agatha Christie (we read 60 of these together after she turned 7; her favorite is The Body in the Library); Hugo Cabret; The Golden Compass; Sea of Trolls; Treasure Island; Tripods; Wrinkle in Time; Earthsea Trilogy; LOTR; Rumpole of the Bailey; James Thurber; Lemony Snicket (esp. All the Wrong Questions). In addition, she has her own favorites that she's read alone to herself over the years.

She also reads many graphic novels, which have greatly influenced her own storytelling and art. She has loved Amulet, Flight, Delilah Dirk, In Real Life, The Silver Six, Ghostopolis, Bad Island, Zita the Space Girl, Drama, Sisters, Smile, Rapunzel's Revenge, Bone.

For reading aloud, I especially recommend Sherlock Holmes, Agatha Christie, and other crime/mystery books with 19th-century decorum. They expose the crime, puzzles, characters, and social dynamics, while leaving the explicit sex and violence off stage. (She can of course ask about anything she likes.)

I hope people will respond with their favorite out-loud reading books.

Read to them. That's it. Just read to them regularly.

This. Plenty of citations backing it up here: http://www.childtrends.org/?indicators=reading-to-young-chil...

Read to your child and make it fun. Do different accents. Do funny voices. Read with expression. Read a page backwards. Read it to a beat. Best of all, hold your kid when you read to them. Also, use stories as rewards.

That's a really important question. How much exposure to books do they currently have?

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