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I am a teacher and I really feel that using ereaders with very small children should be limited. You can use them sometimes, but they should be a supplement to print books. This is because there are concepts relating to early literacy that simply can't be taught without a tactile book (for example, if you look at formal assessments they do in schools for assessing reading readiness in pre-schoolers, it literally begins with 'can they hold the book the right way' and proceeds from there). It has nothing to do with sentiment or with the smell of paper or anything; it has to do with how young children learn. Compare, for example, the function of a calculator with the function of small plastic dinosaurs kindergartners use to learn basic counting. You would not tale away the dinosaurs, give a four-year-old a calculator, and expect them to learn addition and subtraction.
So, out and about, on the town, in a pinch, can Winnie the Pooh on an iPod be a fun thing? Yes. Can a child play a little with a Kindle and understand that Mummy reads on it? Yes. But should that replace paper books for the pre-chapter book crowd? No, I don't think it should.
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