Thread by @UrsulaV

I do in fact read everything on ebook, as my eyesight’s not what it was, but I do NOT want bookstores to get whalloped. Also, kid books are gonna be hit just as hard.

https://twitter.com/alasdairstuart/status/1452359583608066055?s=21

There are currently no good cheap e-readers that fill the niche of print for small children. I’ve been saying one’s probably a few years off since like 2010. I’ve been wrong every time.

And kids NEED books. For adults, it’s an annoyance, an emotional loss, a hit to our well-being. Kids, though, have windows of language acquisition, and they very much have windows where you can convince them that reading is not an instrument of torture.

And yes, there are used books and libraries and all that stuff, but kids are hard on books. They need replacing. And that means publishers need to be in place to replace them—and print new ones!—and there need to be bookstores to sell them from!

If the temporary loss of print books whomps any sector of that too hard, then…well, it’ll suck.