I predicted in the near future, hard copy books will be antiques, so precious one might perceive as valuables from the past. People will only get to see books in the museum and children will look at the previous generation as environmental criminals. 

The emergent of e-books with easy access on multiple platforms encourage people to shift from purchasing hard copy books to e-books. Free e-books.net offers vast selection of genre which are free (you can guess it, I know) and it offers translations, downloads, free apps for smartphones and sharing on the social media. Impressive! I am sure there are a lot of other sites offering e-books but for the moment, I'm here to stay.

On one side, I'm glad this evolution occurs as we are moving towards conserving our forest. The downside of using e-book would be the peripheral used to access it. For example, using the smartphones, tablets or computers in reading would divert the attention of the reader especially young reader who could not defy the temptation to switch task. I know, games and Facebook are hard to resist! ;)

As for now, I would be traditional as we have loads of hard copy books available everywhere and easily accessible. Furthermore hard copy books will engage young learners even more as they feel a sense of belonging. I notice that in my children when we go to the library to borrow books. They choose a book that they like and they take it as their own. They thought of the book and its story as a part of them. Even when the younger brother wanted to exchange book with the elder ones would be a tug of war between them. 

By using hard copy books, parents or teachers can choose books that are age appropriate. We can clearly see what our children or learners are reading (because we can see the cover) as oppose to e-books which are more difficult to monitor the materials read. Well, talk about control....there are lots of issues but I'm not going to discuss it here.

Just for the love of books, choose the platform and materials wisely. Age appropriate material, subject matter and interest must be taken into consideration, be it e-books or the hard copy books. We might want to look at our objectives in determining the suitable materials to use. In addition, let us not forget to allow for a little autonomy to our young readers in choosing their books because it encourage reading engagement.