[NickyWithNook]

Another thing: the good thing about Amazon for families is that eventually if you have several e-readers in the house, you can set up one account and send books to individual e-readers depending on for whom they're intended. That way adult books that might not be appropriate for kids aren't in view on their screens, and you don't have to wade through each other's books. (Edit: And, as one kid gets older and is at an age where they want to read books originally purchased for another kid, it's easy to send the book to another e-reader.) Nook has a child account option but it seems more clumsy and more of a PITA to me. My brother uses it with his and his kids' Nooks. I have my kids set up on a separate account from me, which works OK, but then we can't as easily share books with each other. I think Kindle gets the highest marks for how easy it is for a whole family to use various e-readers. And once you buy into one ecosystem (ie nook vs. kindle) it's at best a pain to move to another one. It's probably best to choose the one that will work best for you long term and then stick with it, IMO.

One other option I'll throw out, that will somewhat contradict what I just said, is that my older daughter has a Nook Tablet that can be run as an Android tablet. Nooks have an SD card slot, and you can set up an SD card (or by one already set up) that will allow you to boot it as an Android tablet, and then on that you can get the Kindle app and read both Nook and Kindle books. There are other e-reader apps as well.

Of course at that point you could just get an Android tablet. There are good options there too. And any tablet can be used as an e-reader.

But for kids to be able to navigate and for future versatility if you have several e-readers in your family, I'd still go with a Kindle Fire for what your'e saying - if you can find a way to keep them from destroying it as I said in my other post.