As I’m sure you know, I’m a fan of the book. I especially like it in its old-school paper form. But I will admit that there are sure to be more and more excellent uses of electronic bookery. I’m actually really excited to see the various forms a book will take in my lifetime. There are so many possibilities that frankly I can’t think about it too much lest it blow my old-school mind. What if you could touch a word in a paper book and have it pronounced? Or have the characters put on a play for you? Ok, I actually wouldn’t advocate that last one, because the best part about books is that the characters put on a play in your head as you’re reading it, and I am mostly against any form where someone else decides for you exactly what those characters look like and sound like.

Anyway! Two fun sites that are new to me.

Tikatok capitalizes on print-on-demand technology to let you self-publish your own book. Henry writes a lot of books, and we generally just gather all the pages and staple them together, but I know he’d be really psyched if one of his books was printed out and hardbound. You can browse through and see all the other books people have made, and you can “favorite” stories or share them.

The thing that I like about it is that the Tikatok site has little “story sparks” ideas so that a computer-savvy reader kid could be inspired to continue to work on a story, and really, to write a better story. I also like that they encourage drawing the illustrations by hand rather than doing them on the computer. I would have loved this kind of thing when I was ten years old.

Another site I’m loving is Lookybook. They essentially have replicas of actual books, and you can “read” them on the computer (provided you have very good eyesight or reading glasses). I like that you can get a better preview of a book than just “looking inside” on Amazon.com, which generally gives you a view of the copyright page and the back cover. I thought that it was a little bit of a pain to read to the kids on Lookybook, but it’s a great way to check out books I might want to get from the library. I like that you can search by keyword or browse subjects. Why not check it out with a book Eli and I enjoyed, Barn Savers? (Don’t worry, it’s free.)

Each book has a little description, and many have reviews from users. There are links to other books by the same author. You can create your own little “bookshelf” of books you like. Like I said, I’m not sure how much I’d actually read a book on Lookybook, but it’s so, so nice to have a place where you can actually look at an entire book before deciding whether to put it on your library list. I’ll link to Lookybook if a Children’s Book of the Week is on there, too!