June 12, 2008,
YouTube for PictureBooks?
By Blake Wilson

Lookybook is a new site where you can browse children’s picture books by flipping through every page. There’s a bit of a half-baked social-networking angle to it — users can comment on books and build bookshelves of favorites. But mostly it’s a try-before-you-buy tool. And maybe the coolest thing (for bloggers) is that you can embed any book on your own site as easily as a YouTube video.
They’ve kept the text and images are pretty small, but you might be able to beat the system and read bedtime stories from your laptop for a title with huge type and few words, like “First the Egg.” It doesn’t seem like the site was designed to be navigated by tots, but I’d be interested to hear from parents out there whether their kids like it.
(Publishers Weekly has more in this story from November, when the site launched)

This story is from the wonderful Paper Cuts blog, one of my favourites.

Use this link to have a look at the site and to turn the pages of the picture book on your screen.