The Illuminated Manuscript
by Renée Olson, Editor-in-Chief -- School Library Journal, 11/1/1998
E-books come with their own light source. But do they shine?
For the past few weeks, I've been reading books that glow. That's not to say that I've been poring over illuminated medieval texts, mesmerized by the shimmer of gold leaf. Instead, my book of choice has been a Rocket eBook, one of two electronic books coming on the market this fall.
The Rocket eBook appears to be designed to make it difficult for people to keep saying they'd never curl up with a computer. The size of a mass-market paperback, the Rocket eBook weighs just over one pound and can be used -- as it should be -- without reading the instructions.
Getting text from the Web and onto the device proved to be extremely fast with a T1 connection to the Internet (with the Rocket eBook, you go to the barnesandnoble.com site). Sharon Creech's Walk Two Moons took all of two minutes. Frank McCourt's Angela's Ashes took three.
Thankfully, the Rocket eBook improves upon reading text on the Web. When you finish a "page," you press a button near the "spine" of the device and the next page appears, a welcome improvement over scrolling.
After using the Rocket eBook -- on the subway and, thanks to its backlit screen, in a darkened bedroom -- I'll say this: I was as engaged by the authors' words, played out in pixels, as I am reading text printed on paper. But was it aesthetically pleasing? Hardly.
While the typeface is perfectly readable, it has as much to do with fine typography as the poured concrete buildings of the 1970s have to do with Notre Dame. And since illustration and color are still at the fantasy stage, picture books will definitely be the last to be adapted for the screen, if ever.
Still, for what the device lacks in beauty, it makes up in experimental value. While the Rocket eBook, created by NuvoMedia, a Palo Alto, CADbased company, and its competitor, the Softbook, may very well turn out to be failures, they're likely to spur on further development of portable readers. Since the Rocket eBook can store up to 4,000 pages (4MB) of text -- or about 10 novels -- I wouldn't be surprised if electronic textbooks beat out trade books in a race for acceptance. Carrying a single lightweight textbook reader would be a relief for the aching student backs of America.
What's harder to predict is whether kids will read electronic books outside the classroom. But it's not too hard to imagine real enthusiasm for them among voracious readers a few years shy of a drive's license. School's closed for the weekend? Not a problem. Download The Scarlet Letter on Saturday from the school library. The parental chauffeurs can't drive to the public library until next week? Not to worry. Browse the library's online catalog on the Web and download three books on your current passion, ichthyology.
But it will take time for them to become common. The introductory cost of the readers themselves, for instance, is prohibitive for most families -- the Rocket eBook retails for $499; the Softbook for $299.
Nor does it look as though libraries and consumers will pay less for a book in an electronic format than for its print counterpart, a topic that merits its own editorial since publishers will save on paper and distribution costs.
We also need the high-tech industry to settle on one standard for hardware and software, just as the video industry did for the VCR and the videocassette. The process should be interesting. Online partners Barnesandnoble.com and Bertelsmann, the German company that bought Random House this spring, have invested in the Rocket eBook model, while Microsoft announced that it will throw its support behind Softbook Press.
Even if these problems are solved, electronic books will never hold a candle to the beauty of an illuminated manuscript (but then again, modern books never have). Nevertheless, there's much to be said for a book that a kid can read under the covers -- without a flashlight.
Renée Olson
Editor-in-Chief
rolson@slj.cahners.com
