Why Beatrix Potter Would Love a Digital Reader (wordpress.com) 98
destinyland writes "In 1906, children's book author Beatrix Potter tried creating her own new, non-book format for delivering her famous fairy tales. 'Intended for babies and tots, the story was originally published on a strip of paper that was folded into a wallet, closed with a flap, and tied with a ribbon.' While today there's hundreds of children's picture books, it's fun to look back over a century to actual images from one of Potter's original strange wallet-sized stories — 'The Story of A Fierce, Bad Rabbit' — plus an image showing you exactly what Beatrix Potter thought 'a fierce, bad rabbit' would look like!"
Re:huh? (Score:5, Interesting)
I don't know about the kindle, but an iPhone doesn't seem to be too hard. I was at a theme park the other day and the guy in front of my was carrying a baby that couldn't talk yet. It was holding his iPhone and I watched the baby repeated slide-unlock his iPhone, then wait for it to reset, and hit the button and unlock it again. Granted, it didn't manage to get the slide-unlock every time. It took about 4 tries. But there was no doubt that the kid had a good handle on what it was doing.
Amazon pays a pretty penny for buzz (Score:4, Interesting)
Oh Amazon! I may be a luddite but at least my books will still function after the collapse of civilization.
I know with my books I can bump them, drop them, get them wet (protip: freeze wet books so they dry out and don't puff up) and even SHARE them with other people. Sadly they're not fireproof.
With a kindle I have a single electronic gadget full of books that Amazon and publishers can recall at any time for any reason [slashdot.org].
Beatrix Potter's book 'alternative', and calling it an alternative is quite a stretch but anything's possible if you pay off the right blogs, has all of the flexibility of the dead tree format and none of the drawbacks of some proprietary e-format laden with DRM.
She was being creative and nowhere near trying to introduce a new format which would supercede a content delivery system which has been proven over the course of centuries not a mere handful of years.
What, no colour? (Score:5, Interesting)
Not necessarily digital readers, but... (Score:4, Interesting)
Maybe I'm missing something, but what is the link between publishing a book in a pamphlet style and a love for digital readers?
It's a leap, but it's not as big as you think. It's not so much that Beatrix Potter was pining away for the day when you could have a book that changed what its only page looked like rather than having to flip pages. It's that she conceived of another way of presenting the story other than the conventional book form, and that shows she was more likely to embrace other non-conventional forms.
To belabor the point a bit, it might be worth noting that the form she chose is at least marginally more portable and multifunctional to boot.
Epic Fail... (Score:5, Interesting)
These people obviously dont have young children.
Young children dont *read* books, that is about the 5th to 6th use of them.
#1 is they eat books (chew on them whenever possible)
#2 is they use books as hammers (apparently hitting things with large flat objects is fun!)
#3 is they throw them the moment they are more than 5 inches above the ground
Can someone lend me a kindle (/ipad/whatever) and a stopwatch? I have an experiment in mind...
I suspect Ms.Potters idea was more about making books MORE disposable, not less (the foldups could be printed more cheaply, as no binding).
Re:Amazon pays a pretty penny for buzz (Score:2, Interesting)
Got a book wet once. Used a hair dryer on it and then ironed it on the lowest setting. Now I can't remember which book it was, I can't tell.
Re:What? (Score:1, Interesting)
Actually, no. There's a lot of contemporary literary theory (especially in New Historicist circles) that considers the degree to which the medium can contribute to the overall effect of a book. Even 20 years ago, I took a class in which we discussed at length how the material characteristics of "A Christmas Carol" interacted with the text (the first edition was deliberately designed as a Christmas gift, with cloth covers with gilt lettering and green endpapers and illustrations - http://www.gutenberg.org/files/46/46-h/46-h.htm - while there is a passage in the "Ghost of Christmas Present" section in which the Ghost says it's *good* for stores to remain open on Christmas, so people can buy more gifts!)