I get that parents worry about screen time. But speaking as a researcher studying the effects of screen-based experiences, screens can be a great tool for reading. Digital books give children unique opportunities to learn and improve skills through literacy apps. To that end, I am one of many researchers in this field who believe that digital reading should not be considered screen time in the traditional sense.

With the large number of educational technological products that lack research and good design, the million-dollar question is: What makes a digital story good for children’s learning? Over the past 20 years, researchers have identified specific design features and reading situations that make some digital books more educational than others. First, it’s crucial that digital books offer high-quality personalized reading experiences. With books that have AI-based text generators and a more open-ended design, children become multimedia creators, co-writers and co-illustrators of their own story universe. Second, digital books can significantly enhance the parent-child reading experience. The questions embedded (嵌入的) in digital books should model and expand what the parent might ask, and through this modeling, enhance the quality of parents’ talk around the book.

But as much as I support digital reading, the commercial turn in the development of ed tech worries me, particularly in relation to profit-driven design and misuse of children’s data. Like some social media, subscription libraries turn kids’ attention into a commodity (商品) through automatic book recommendations. These books are often tied to advertising clicks and exhibit low literary quality in their stories. Furthermore, there’s often no content oversight, allowing anyone to become a publisher, which can lead to the creation of biased or data-gathering materials targeting children. Generative AI has expanded content creation possibilities but also raised concerns about quality. In this regard, digital books, like all ed tech, need strict quality checks and improved collaboration between researchers and developers.

Anyway, the digital reading format has opened an exciting new research frontier. This includes using real-time data that teachers and other professionals can use to individualize how children learn to read. AI can be a good partner in supporting adults’ choice of texts, prompts and reading activities for children, provided it is trained with diverse data and valid reading models. As researchers’ calls for evidence-based children’s ed tech are being heard by governments and funders, I hope the past two decades of e-book research can deliver the advantages of digital books to all children. Like it or not, I hope you’ll see that, at least for reading, screens can be an amazing tool to teach your child to read.

The Ice Cream Machine is no ordinary tale. It’s a flavorful (好味道的) book made up of six stories, all of which have the same title, but each has a different story centering on one subject, ice cream.

One ice-cream story focuses on a boy and his robot in the distant future. Another is about a father and daughter who invent an ice-cream machine. My favorite story in the book talks about two sisters, Pam and Penelope, who try to enter an ice-cream-eating contest. The six stories go with black-and-white illustrations (插图) from six different artists.

The Ice Cream Machine is inventive and fun. Its author, Adam Rubin, has a lot of experience when it comes to writing about food. His most famous children’s book is Dragons Love Tacos. It was a No.1 New York Times best-seller. “I like to write about food because it’s universally beloved by people of all different cultures,” Rubin says. “It’s something we can all relate to.”

Rubin hopes The Ice Cream Machine inspires kids to write. Its jacket turns into an envelope in which readers can send him their stories. Rubin says writers should write about things they like. “If you’re trying to write something that someone else likes, you might not get it right. Then no one’s happy,” he says. “But if you focus on writing about something that you like, then it’s fun. When it makes you happy, your writing will bring joy.”

I recommend The Ice Cream Machine to anyone who likes creative storytelling. The book goes down just like ice cream: smooth, enjoyable, and with a pleasant aftertaste.

Rubin’s favorite flavor of ice cream? “Chocolate chip,” he says. Don’t tell him, but the best flavor is actually birthday cake！

Every day around the world, thousands of people with little to no scholarly training in art history walk into museums. They may or may not read notice boards that share relevant information of the artworks or artists. Imagine, before being permitted to direct their eyeballs to the art on the walls, museum visitors were required to read a 15-or 20-page introduction to each piece or each artist. How many people would go to museums if that were the case?

Yet this seems to be the expectation when it comes to reading classic literature. Classic novels typically come with 15-or 20-page introductions, which often include spoilers, assuming that readers do not come to classic books to discover, be absorbed in, and be surprised by the story world. Also, apparently, we mustn't read classics alone, without experts guiding our experiences.

However, classic literature is in a unique position to show us that we' re not alone in our pains and joys. By taking us out of our time, classic books free us to see beyond the set of beliefs we stick to and to connect human experiences that remain alive across time and place. What could be more grounding, more comforting, than seeing ourselves in the battles, longings, and pleasures that have played out across hundreds, thousands of years of human history? Our personal engagement is the first step of a longer journey of discovery that deepens our knowledge and understanding of ourselves and our world. We may for example, feel for Hester Prynne from Nathaniel Hawthorne's The Scarlet Letter though we despair of the world she lived in.

While we're letting go of things, let's stop worrying about understanding everything. We can't. It will be fun if we embrace curiosity, the pleasure of working out a mystery, and our common relationships as humans. We can feel, for example, the power of self-sacrifice in Charles Dickens'A Tale of Two Cities even when we lack full understanding of the cultural references and language.