Ebooks: Do you need one for your Kids?

School just started here. It seems to be earlier and earlier each year, but really this year was a little late compared

to last year. At the open house I happened to look over the information about the library and policies for checking out books and was surprised to see an option for ebooks. Apparently the students can get the code to check out books for their eDevices.

As I watch my middle son struggle carrying his book bag home each day I have started to think that the school going to all digital books wouldn’t be a bad thing. Personally I really prefer paper myself (even with a computer background) If I’m going to sit down and read a fiction book I love my Kindle – but with a textbook I want paper. My oldest though is making it through college on all etextbooks. His first semester alone he could have spent $500 on books or $500 on an iPad that would last his whole college career. It’s already paid for itself several times over.

Forgotten books would be a thing of the past when you can just pull a copy up from your account. No more dealing with kid’s doodling in the corner of the book. I’m fairly certain that one day the switch to all digital will occur, just how long until it happens? I’m not sure kids have to have ebooks yet, but I suspect it’s just around the corner.

In my family we have all the types of devices you can have. We’ve even tried the cheap ($89) Pandigital android reader. There are pros and cons to each. Ease to use and set up does play into my choices though. To start with I really can’t recommend the Pandigital – It was hard to set up. I’m not positive we got the entire thing set up either. We finally gave up. It used the same type store as the Nook (Barnes and Noble) and we did manage to get a couple books, but quickly lost the charge. I know it’s around here somewhere uncharged, but we really gave up on it.

Next came the Kindle. I have an early Kindle and love it. It doesn’t do anything fancy except it has the cell network included (no extra fee and no setup involved). For it I just had to link it to my Amazon account and was good to go. There are thousands of free books out there and I have enough reading material to last me several years currently on mine. We haven’t tried the new Kindle Fire, but it’s more along the lines of a small iPad and I’m totally happy with my Kindle being non-backlit and featureless.

My middle son has the Nook and it seems to be very similar. I think his has to be hooked to a wireless network, but seems to meet his needs. I’ve been told that you can do a search of the store with it for 0.00 and find all the free books available for it (also a lot of books).

I also have an Android Tablet which I really don’t use much. It’s similar to my iPad, but a little more complicated to work. Android hasn’t standardized so each device has different things available. It seems all the apps I want don’t run on mine. I think the Android I have was the same cost as an ipad (It’s the Acer Iconia) so I can’t say I’d buy another)

Finally my ipad is my second favorite (coming in just a hair behind my plain kindle) I do love how I can see the covers to my books in color.

Really until the schools start switching to ebooks, they aren’t required – but if your child loves to read they are convenient. One ebook versus a whole bookshelf (or in our case room) of books.