Kindle Paperwhite: good news for kids

When tech giant Amazon launched the latest avatar of its e-book reader, the Kindle Paperwhite in India, it  addressed pretty much the same  section of consumers that it targets world-wide — upwardly aspiring young adults —  or mature buyers who wanted to read on-the-go and no longer cared to lug half a dozen doggy-eared paperbacks, while on working tours or on holiday.

Then a funny thing happened. Parents found in the Kindle Paperwhite just the sort of tool that would be rated “cool” by their kids — and  hopefully “kindle” in them a renewed interest in the virtually extinct art of reading.

Youngsters pathologically averse to doing anything except the bare minimum of required reading, were happy to be seen doing it on an electronic screen.

Quick to leverage this trend, Amazon deftly responded this vacation season by highlighting some kid-friendly features that they had built into the Kindle:

A vocabulary builder: Words looked up are automatically added to a personalised  dictionary.

FreeTime: It lets parents create a reading list and award their children when they have done the reading.

Panel view: It lets children read comics or graphic stories, panel by panel.

More importantly, parents   can now limit children’s access to recommended and safe resources in the Kindle Store or indeed on the Web.

The Kindle e-book store holds a collection of over 250,000 books priced Rs 99 or less and over 1 million priced Rs 299 or less.

The nice thing about e-books is that you will never run out of supply. And the ability to switch from  text to pictures to animation to video, is technology’s gift to the young of today. The WiFi version of the Kindle Paperwhite costs Rs 10,999, while the Wifi+3G version which provides free 3G connection to the Web in India,  for the life of the device costs an additional Rs 3,000.