What the heck is a Vook you might ask?  According to a recent Washington Post article on the subject, a Vook is

– a video/book hybrid produced in part by Simon & Schuster’s Atria Books. Interspersed throughout the text are videos and links that supplement the narrative. 

It’s a dizzying experience, reading Vooks. But they represent just a few examples of a new genre that has been alternatively dubbed v-books, digi-books, multimedia books and Cydecks, all with essentially the same concept: It’s a book . . . but wait, there’s more!

The article goes on to speculate whether this is the beginning of the end for printed books as we know them. (See my previous post Reading in the Year 2020.) The article reminds us that telling stories in print has only been around in English for 300 years and we shouldn’t be surprised as new formats evolve.

Currently, fiction Vooks,  (The Amanda Project, Thirty-Nine Clues, Skeleton Creek) are aimed at kids who apparently want to stay connected to the world while they read which is in sharp contrast to why most adults read fiction…to escape.