Alice in Wonderland ebook on iPad captures spirit of the pop-up

Check out this video of an iPad version of Alice's Adventures in Wonderland

http://mashable.com/2010/04/13/alice-in-wonderland-ipad/?utm_source=twitterfeed&utm_medium=twitter&utm_campaign=Feed:%20Mashable%20%28Mashable%29&utm_content=Twitter

I'm going to break from my usual rant against such things and admit that this looks pretty cool, pretty fun and seems to capture the spirit of the illustrated versions of the manuscript. I suspect kids will have a good time with it and they might just be drawn in to read the actual text.

But if I wanted to read Alice, rather than play with my iPad (no, I don't actually have one) I would still turn to a more traditional form of the text whether ebook or print. Unlike the original illustrations which don't overly distract one from the text, this stuff will, ultimately, get in the way of a real reading experience, of entering the so-called fictive dream. It's fine as an introduction to reading, but it certainly doesn't replace it.

It's my blog so if I want to make the same damn point over and over and over again, I will, ok? So here goes: When thinking about ebooks people forget that we've already had multimedia on print for years. Picture books, illustrated books, photography books, how-to books, coffee table books all benefit from the use of multimedia and will continue to benefit from the use of multimedia. I, frankly, am excited about the prospect of how-to books with embedded videos (if a picture is worth a 1000 words, well, at 30 per second, you do the math). We even already have 3D in the form of pop-up books. I love pop-up books and their fascinating blend of art and engineering. But, as far as literature goes, a pop-up book is a novelty item. This edition of Alice is in the spirit of the pop-up book. The pop-up book has not radically changed fiction and neither will the "interactive" multimedia book.

Fiction may be enhanced by eReaders, but if it is, it will be either through creating social media connections with authors and other readers, or it will be by deepening the fictive dream, not distracting readers from it. After a brief period where everyone thinks they have to experiment, eReaders will finally serve us up fiction that is again made of regular old words. As it should be.