Does a child get a different experience from a book than an e-book? Studies that aim to answer this and similar questions are just getting under way, but researchers expect the answer will be yes. When a parent reads a physical book to a child, the child tends to take away more of the actual content, says Kathy Hirsh-Pasek, a professor of psychology at Temple. This doesn't mean that children shouldn't read books on the iPad. These apps can be fun for a child, which is a good thing.