I see a trumpet, a hand brush, and some baloons. But... I don't see a book.

On the same day that Amazon announced that the Kindle would soon be available for sale in Toys R Us stores, the Seattle based Big Fish electronic gaming company issued a press release concerning their new “Hidden Expedition: Amazon River” game for the Kindle.

It’s not hard to see where this story is headed. Let’s start with the fact that Big Fish has not done anything original here. Games have been on eReaders since they first arrived on the scene. They have, perhaps, innovated slightly in display and graphics quality, something Big Fish is quite proud about. According to their press release:

Hidden Expedition is a hidden object game, where the goal is to search through scenes to find items. The graphical detail on the Kindle — even though it is in black and white — looks pretty cool thanks to what Big Fish Games was able to do with the latest E-Ink Pearl technology behind the Kindle’s low-power screen. Each scene has been remastered for the E-Ink display.

The game has 19 levels and is available in the Kindle Store for $4.99. In the game, you go on an adventure on the Amazon River, searching for a missing professor.

No doubt the professor lost his way while playing a game on the Kindle he was previously reading a map on. So with that concept in mind, let’s move on to the Toys R Us and Amazon partnership.

While part of me wants to look at this story and romantically observe that Kindles and kids will equal reading, but I am not so romantic to be able to slide down that slippery slope. Because when you’re eight-years-old (hell, when your forty years old and hate reading) video games are way cooler than reading. The forty-year-old children aren’t my concern however. That knock-down-drawn-out hardscrabble fight parents make to force their scamp to sit down with a book ended in the most sublimest victory: A kid reading a book. And sometimes learning to like the whole process.

There has been plenty of commentary on eReaders and tablets being thin disguises for adults to play games in public, while appearing to be engaged in the noble pastime of reading a book. But what of some future generation of children that will grow up with further distractions, this time coming in the form of what was before the one great attention building exercise. So as Amazon has now found a brick & mortar ally in marketing Kindles to kids, I have to wonder about what both these things, the increasingly savvy eReader gaming industry and Kindles for kids, means when paired together.

It’s not exactly something that should excite parents, though. That much is sure.