A new reading tool was put on the market this week for the two-to five-year-old set. It is sold for at least $389, an expensive purchase for a kid - and that doesn't even include a $99 annual subscription   fee for games, e-books, and age-appropriate software. That might be fine for parents willing and able to pay thousands for private nursery schools, but will the tool actually help kids learn language and reading skills more effectively than traditional books? Probably not, said Dr. Michael Rich, director of the Center for Media and Child Health at Children's Hospital Boston. "There is a sensory components   to books that isn't there with e-books," he explained. "You can smell it, turn the pages, and taste it, as young kids are likely to do." That might help little ones become more familiar with the books, helping them learn from them, but far more important is whether a person is actually sitting with them while they're looking at the pages. Researchers have shown time and again that kids learn better when they're having interaction   with real people, rather than electronic voices reading to them from a computer or speaking to them from the TV. A Georgetown University study found that kids who learned to put on gloves from watching a video took six times as long to learn the process as those who watched it shown by an adult standing in front of them. "I'm a big believer in teaching kids to live in the digital society and use what the rest of the family uses, but they do need to be _ ," said Dr. Gwenn O'Keeffe, a Boston-based children's doctor and spokesperson for the American Academy of Pediatrics. "We don't recommend that young kids use any type of technology for very long since they have the attention span   of a butterfly." What is the author's purpose in writing the text?
To introduce a new electronic device. To teach kids how to live in a digital world. To show parents how to help kids gain knowledge. To throw new light on kids' use of electronic tools.