Leap Fad

Before Mom and Gram headed north on 95 today we all made a trip to Border's and then to the mall for a few errands. While at Border's I was reminded how much a love of books and reading are a part of my heritage. To say that Gram is an avid reader would be an understatement. The woman tears through 1200 page novels like they are picture books. Reading is one of her passions and I believe it is the key to keeping her mind sharp as her body ages. My mother is an apple that doesn't fall far from the tree. She has dedicated an entire career to teaching 1st graders to love reading. And so it follows that my girls and I also have an affinity for the written word.

Tonight as I rifled around the basement looking for an appropriate downsize I happened upon a Leap Pad that belonged to Shayla. Somewhere along the child raising journey we hit a bump in the road and either bought or were given this Leap Pad system and all of its accessories. The premise of the overpriced gimmick is that it will teach our kids to read with flashy interactive computerized bells and whistles. The reality is that it never worked correctly and Shayla cast it aside fairly quickly. She also learned to read without it and has continued on to be a pretty darn good reader.

Because of the original value of the toy and also a few back and forth exchanges with my husband over its' worthiness, the Leap Pad was granted a place in the storage part of the furnace room for several years. That ended tonight. As of 8 pm it took a flying leap into the garbage can. I thought about giving it to Goodwill or handing it off to another family but ruled against both options on principle. The bottom line is that I have big issues with the computer world encroaching upon the livelihood of books. With the rising popularity of gadgets like Kindle, Nook, and the iPad I fear that our children will one day live in a world without libraries. While many would argue that reading is reading, I feel that holding a book, turning it's pages, and even storing it on a shelf for years provides a greater experience. Somehow the vision of 4 generations of women wandering around the Apple store sharing a love of ebooks pales in comparison to the experience that my kids, mom and gram shared as we perused books in Borders today.

If you ask me (and many literacy experts out there I believe), the key to teaching kids to read is early exposure to books. Another contributing factor is the amount of reading that takes place within the household - even if a book is not being read to the child. So tell me this - will a toddler differentiate between a parent staring at an ebook on their iPad or surfing the net on the same device? I don't think so. But my 2 year old certainly knows when she sees her big sisters reading their chapter books. She often toddles up beside them with her own book and starts flipping the pages.

And so, another item hits the landfill. While I feel sorry for that fact I am happy that the Leap Pad won't fill another child's hands in place of a good old fashioned book.