Books: The Best Kind of Hand-Held Device

I know many parents who worry that electronic devices and games have encroached on their children's reading lives. According to the American Academy of Pediatrics, children under 18 months-old should avoid use of screen media. Children aged 2-5 should have a limit of 1 hour a day. Children 6 and above "require consistent limits on time spent using media."

However, many parents, myself included, experience that these recommendations are not easily upheld. Gaming, YouTube videos, Nick Jr, Netflix, streaming videos, tablets and enticing downloadable games tempt our children morning, noon, and night. Never has there been such "professional-grade" media targeted towards our children's attention. 1 hour seems not only unrealistic, but capable of degenerating the parent-child relationship into a conflict-zone.

That is where your local library comes in! Children who regularly visit the library, on a weekly or bi-monthly basis, engage traditional books and spend more time reading than children who do not utilize libraries. This seems like an obvious statement. But, what is not obvious, is that children who visit the library, no matter how prolific of readers they are, prefer traditional books over all formats, including E-Books. The prolific E-Book reader of children's books doesn't really exist; librarians know this secret and are in the position of sharing this important insight.

Indeed, it's still a book "we want to curl up with;" to take to the beach; to carefully turn the pages of--which even though we know what happens next--keeps our grandchild on our lap. It's still a cookbook that inspires us to reproduce Lydia's cacciatore chicken; it's still a gorgeous picture book that moves us to organize a 'Twas The Night Before Christmas storytime event at our local church. It's not children looking at Santa that enthralls us, it's children being read to--from a book, that turns this into a precious moment. Books create a trinity of space and meaning, between the reader, the child and the observer. We librarians experience this fabulous-trinity during storytimes at the Library. We know, it is only books that can create this kind of magic.

Because libraries seek to circulate books a certain number of times, per capita, libraries tend to stick with formats such as hardcovers. For series books, libraries do stock paperbacks.

Books come in different sizes, shapes, materials and design layout. Parents play an essential role in introducing children to the variability of books. In addition to frequently visiting the library, parents should introduce children to: board books, movable books, pop-up books, sensory books, and books that utilize different weights and sizes of paper. Paper, the actual stuff of which books are made of, can be fun, glamorous, beautiful, tough, comforting, forgiving and--strong. Alas, one need only compare the potential hazard of a torn book versus a shattered I-phone.

The manual act of picking up, holding, positioning, pointing at, connecting images and pictures to the words on the page, becoming visually engaged in the author's word-play and text design, is part and parcel of the "book experience."

Books teach hand eye coordination, facial engagement, one pointed attention, concentration, the humanities, artistry, contextual and abstract thinking, and imagination.

Can all of this really be found in a book? Yes!

Beyond the physical book itself, children sense authorship when they read. "There is a human who cares about telling me this story. Who wrote this masterpiece now in my hands?"

This, in turn, stirs a longing in the child's autonomous self, "I am capable of creativity, of writing. I have a story to tell--as well!"

Recently, Dr. Ian Smith, a native of Danbury and prolific author, regaled a crowd of book-lovers at The Danbury Public Library, reflecting on his love of reading as an adolescent. It was John Grisham's, The Firm that inspired him. Not being able to put-the-book-down, even while "distracted driving" around Danbury, he has the vivid recollection of his teenage self, looking up from the page, and thinking, "One day, I want to write like this." The genius who handed him this book, his high school English teacher at Immaculate High School in Danbury, CT.

Books cause children to move beyond passivity into creativity, into the realm of "I/Thou." Devices deliver entertainment content, to increase consumption. As a librarian, I have never had a child come up to me and ask for a game-coder's address so they can write a letter to the programmer--never once.

The relational dimension of books is in the page--literally--along with our willingness to outstretch our hands to give a child a book, particularly a book that we have a hunch, he/she will be inspired by.

It is the ontology of a book that it can never be replaced by an Android device.

A las, the American Academy of Pediatrics does not put a limit on how much time adults should be enjoying books--with children.

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Jodi L. Weisz, MLIS is a professional librarian who believes in giving children books, by hand, whenever she can. She was the recipient of the Laura Bush Award for America's Libraries for her work building an inner-city library for at-risk youth in the South Bronx, New York. She can be reached at: jweisz@danburylibrary.org