When you say the word new book, you can visualize the uncracked spine, the faint smell of printing ink on the pages, and the unwrinkled pages. There is an eternal debate raging on which are better – physical books or e-books. While each side has it’s merits, here we look at how a homeschool parent can get the best out of buying books for their children.
Advantages of Physical Books
For the past generations that began reading on physical books, holding a book in the hand grounds them. Slows them down and makes them focus on the written word. There are no hyperlinks to take you away from the page, no distractions from the story that you are reading. They tend to give a more fulfilling sense of satisfaction to the reader. They don’t require any power and can be picked up and read right away. Illustrations on paper tend to look much better than in e-book readers.
Advantages of E-books
The E-books are mostly designed for quick reading. It’s much easier to skim through the contents of an e-book with the constant scrolling function. It’s also easier to add additional data via the hyperlinks which the reader may be able to access instantly. There is great flexibility of font size, and font type while reading e-books which makes it easier for people to read without straining their eyes. Best of all, a single e-book reader can potentially store thousands of books in the space of a single physical book.
What Should You Buy?
Ideally speaking for the homeschool classroom you should have a mix of both physical books as well as e-books. Printed physical books are a bit more expensive than their digital counterparts, so you may be saving some money by buying e-books. However, not all books translate well to e-books, and younger readers may find it much easier to connect with books that they can turn the pages to and see the next illustrations on. While most text-books may be considered essential reading and require physical copies, it may not be a bad idea to purchase e-books for light reading.
