oh bother

This is incredibly upsetting, although not really unexpected news. The article is worth reading though.

I still remember sitting on couch while my mom read me Winnie the Pooh stories. My parents have read me countless stories, but, for some reason, I remember Winnie the Pooh best. I also remember hearing my dad read Winnie the Pooh to Charlotte. He does the voices differently than my mom does and, when I thirteen or fourteen, that took me a few minutes to reconcile with myself (because I was and continue to be a strange child). Anyway, these stories are part of childhood and family to me just as they were to A.A. Milne and his son. I think that he should be respected enough as an artist and father to have his stories published as they were written.

More than that though, as the article says,

". . .  while I appreciate and encourage the efforts of a publishing house to engage with the digital and eBook format – reading is reading, after all – the decision to shorten a children’s story in order to hold their attention seems, as far as I’m concerned, to defeat the object. We read to children to stimulate their imaginations, to encourage both written and verbal communication and to help them to develop lively, interesting and engaging opinions on subject matter they are consuming. Surely, then, reducing the content prevents the advancement of the very skill-set that this app looks to develop?" ~Maisie Skidmore 

Stories, more than almost anything else shaped my childhood. Still, at 19 years old, I sit in the living room as my parents read stories to my siblings and me. I cannot even comprehend not raising my own children (if it is in the Lord's plan for me to have children) in a house filled with well-written, engaging, thought-provoking, unabridged and unedited books - the paper and binding kind - the kind that smell better the longer they've been around (usually) - the kind that are full of other readers' notes or earmarked pages - the kind that can be passed from one person to the next - the kind that have distinct weights and shapes - the kind that don't involve staring at a screen (like I am doing as I write this and you are doing as you read this).

 I really hope screens never fully destroy attention and imagination.