The Death of Picture Books!

This post (two post day- can you tell it is a holiday?) will be link heavy. Get ready.


Check it out, picture books are dying

Or, check out Kate Harding's (*swoon*) post on how picture books are, in fact, not dying

I am pretty sure, along with Kate Harding and others, that this is not the death of the picture book. Remember when CDs came out, and everyone panicked about the death of the book? That didn't happen, though when encarta released their CDROM encyclopaedia that kind of was the death of the print encyclopaedia, so I do understand the persisting fear. Books are great, and reading is good for, and books are... tangible. There is something so very satisfying about being able to pick up a book that is new and fresh, and to be able to put it down again when you're finished. Okay, enough nostalgia about books and stuff. The part of this article that concerns me is the part where all of the bookstore people they've interviewed talk about parents telling their kids not to read picture books because they can *do better* (and also because picture books will not get you into Harvard. My suggestion: don't put them on your CV if you're that concerned) and read texts that are more "difficult." As someone that loves and studies graphic novels, I find this idea very troubling. I think that graphic novels, comics, and, yes, even picture books have the potential and capacity to be eloquent, challenging, and even more difficult than some novels-of-the-harvard-going-sort.

Anyways, it is a holiday, and I don't want to make my brain hurt anymore with all this thinking. What do others think about this?