Coming to a Small Screen Near You

Electronic picture books may seem like a logical next step in children's book publishing. But is a color image viewed on a computer monitor a worthy successor to a circle of children gathered around a printed copy of Where the Wild Things Are or Frog and Toad Are Friends ? A new company, ChildrensElibrary.com, seems to think so, and is marketing a new kind of picture-book collection to school and public libraries.

The Spring Branch Independent School District (SBISD) in the Houston, TX, area will be one of the first school districts to use the e-books. Barry Bishop, SBISD's head of library services, recently signed up Spring Branch for a district-wide subscription to the new e-collection. The school district already subscribes to netLibrary, and circulates approximately 100 netLibrary e-books a month. But netLibrary, he says, doesn't offer many picture books or books for students under eighth grade. ChildrensElibrary books will be offered to SBISD teachers and students beginning in September, and Bishop wonders how they'll use them. "We'll start exposing reading teachers and language arts teachers to them first," he says. Spring Branch's librarians have "already suggested using them projected on a screen, in just the way you'd use one of those 'big books' [large picture books up to three feet high, often used in storytimes]," says Bishop.

The ChildrensElibrary collection currently numbers about 1,200 e-books, evenly divided between nonfiction books, picture books, easy readers, and special interactive books. ChildrensElibrary offers, for example, a whimsical interactive book version of the movie Shrek, and a series of books for toddlers with Flash animations from a company called Little Fox. Many of the books are works that have gone out of print by well-known authors and illustrators; others are from popular series like the Berenstain Bears books by Stan and Jan Berenstain. Byron Preiss, ChildrensElibrary CEO, says that although some of the e-books are interactive and contain sounds and animation, they're still books, not games. "If there isn't coexistence of text and pictures at the same time," he says, "we don't do it."

To view the e-picture books, computers must install Sealed Media digital rights management software. "Digital rights management" refers to the fact that publishers have heavily protected most of these electronic books—so that users won't be able to copy, print, or share them, Napster-style.

Bishop is anxious to see how the ChildrensElibrary titles will be received this fall. "I usually don't like multimedia software with a book, but I don't mind most of these [e-books]," he says. Bishop's a little uneasy about using e-books with very young children, he says, but feels that e-picture books may find a niche because they will be easily accessible to childcare centers and pre-kindergarten programs.

Not everyone is excited by the idea of picture books going electronic. Candace Deisley, the curriculum librarian at the College of Saint Rose in Albany, NY, and a member of the 2003 Caldecott Medal Committee, took a look at some ChildrensElibrary books and admits that she is a traditionalist. "I want kids to have something besides a screen—either a monitor screen or a projector screen—to remember when they think of wonderful illustrated work for children," she says.

Bishop agrees, but with some qualifications. "Young kids need to handle books," he says, "but a young child can also sit in a parent or caregiver's lap in front of the computer and listen to her voice reading the story." He has no fear that e-picture books will replace their paper equivalents anytime soon. Meanwhile, free trials of the ChildrensElibrary collection are available at www.childrenselibrary.com.