There are days when one gets up and finds reasons for hope. I read that the Bologna Fair has shown that children continue to adore paper books, even though they live surrounded by screens. The illustrated story maintains the same magnetism as always, and the truth is that it does not adapt well to the tablet.
The book in general resists well to the changes brought about by the technological leap that our lives have taken in the last twenty years. At the 2008 Frankfurt Fair, the end of the traditional support of the book was prophesied in a decade, in favor of the electronic format, but this has not happened. More paper books are being sold than ever, although those that are read on a screen maintain an acceptable market share. But the children's book in all its versions (illustrated, die-cut, with pop-ups) wins the battle by a landslide.
It has its logic. Who does not remember the first illustrated readings of him with the same delight that Proust felt for madeleines dipped in tea during his childhood? Beyond pleasure, Gregorio Luri provides the following data to determine its importance in On the art of reading (Platform): the child who lacks books at home presents, upon finishing his compulsory schooling, a cognitive delay of a year and a half with respect to to the one who is one hundred and 2.2 years old with the one who is over five hundred.
And, in case anyone had any doubts, the author includes the conclusions of a study published by Columbia University, according to which the reading fluency of a six-year-old boy allows us to predict his school results at 16, and the Literacy competence at 16 allows us to guess the salary of a person at 42.
The WHO recommends that children do not use screens before the age of two and that they do not spend more than an hour in front of them, with four. Instead, he recommends reading as the best sedentary activity. The book awakens the fantasy of children, allows them to share and socialize, but it will also help them in their school results. Bologna shows us the way. Modernity are also paper stories. And they never run out of battery, nor do they allow hackers access.
