I bought B&N’s colored Nook for my grandson a few days before they came out with their version of an Ipad which was even cheaper. I’ll admit as a meddling grandmother, it was an attempt to help this three year-old learn English as his mother, a psychologist, is Portugese and although fluent in seven languages, including English, evidently speaks only Portugese to him. She’s with him all day; they live in NZ, and my son’s busy teaching psychology. When he gets home, she wants only Portugese spoken. She’s determined to return to Portugal permanently. They were in that dreadful earthquake and lost their house and all their possessions, but it seems a bit much to want to flee to Portugal of all places.
Well, they’ve flown to Portugal for three months (before they have to go back to NZ), and son emailed me how grateful he was that I’d gotten the Nook for little Daniel. Why in the world — with Portugal in such trouble, would you want your child basically trapped there, unable to speak English which is today’s lingua Franca? This is nuts. Something unfortunate is going. At some point I suspect the only contact my son will have with Daniel will be over the internet, so I guess the Nook was indeed a great idea.
Yes the earthquakes were terrible, it was immediately after that I decided to make work arraignments to fly from Alaska to Oz being that I am in the concrete batching field.
Sounds to me the child would benefit from English speaking tutorials or even just childrens audio books.