"The Magic Bookshelves" is a collection of eighteen original non-fiction books developed by Learning Magic, Inc. and utilizing the SoftTouch, Inc.®'s electronic book application My Own Bookshelf®. This collection provides a wide variety of reading material presented in a narrative style.

Note: Because of the exceptionally rich assortment of movies associated with these books, the two bookshelves plus the installer completely fill a CD. Therefore The Magic Bookshelves ships as EITHER a Mac or as a Windows version CD. You must choose the platform you will use when you place the order.

The Magic Bookshelves CD is in the final stages of production, and we are taking advance orders now. As soon as the first copies are burned, we will begin shipping. Those who take advantage of this advance order option will receive a link to a bonus book about a mountain bike race. (Bonus offer runs until shipping actually begins.) So be one of the first to enjoy these books, and get a sneak peak at the wide variety you will find on The Magic Bookshelves!

Please note: The textual content in "The Magic Bookshelves" books can easily be changed to meet the needs of individual students. For tips on how to do this and for terms of use for revised versions, click here.

The books install in one operation as a pair of bookshelves that are then available from the Read menu in My Own Bookshelf®. Themes for the books cover many subject areas including science, history, behind the scenes tours of common occupations, visits to far away locations, sports, and just plain fun experiences.

Many of the books take students on real life expreiences. Movies are a vital element, showing students the steps in loading a ferry with cars and trucks, and in cutting, trimming, and packaging meat. The navigation controls can be customized for each student, with a simple forward arrow, as has been set up for the Ferry book, or with the additional back arrow, start over, and stop options as has been set here for the At the Butcher Shop story.

Students learn about the special tools and techniques used by these beekeepers, as well as learning the steps of more familiar occupations such as baking bread (Visiting a Baker) and a chance to feed and care for various farm animals (Morning Chores). Strolling around a summer market introduces them to quite a few different occupations and many colorful sights as well.

Other books in this collection take students on virtual field trips. The Meadow includes observations of hummingbirds and bees, with sounds bringing the outdoors to the reader. The two books illustrated above take students outdoors at night for a star party, and on a walk along the beach when an extra low tide has revealed plants and animals usually hidden underwater.

Students always enjoy reading about animals, such as the story of some dogs from an animal shelter as recounted in the Camp Charlie book. They also find about about animals they are less likely to meet, in excursions to a kangaroo farm and to a buffalo roundup. Photos like the one here from The Kangaroo Farm, diagrams such as this one from Buffalo Round Up, and short movies lend reality and supply information to these stories.

Another subject area that engages students and motivates them to read is sports and recreation. Multimedia adds exciting images to the text in these books. Here a movie brings the dramatic moment when the balloon stands up to students who read Hot Air Balloon Launch. In At the Ballgame, the reader experiences each part of a baseball game from the opening warm-ups to the final play through videos, including a grand slam home run.

The Magic Bookshelves CD is also a chance for students to visit far places. Climbing Mount Kilimanjaro takes students to Tanzania to experience the difficulties of ascending so high that lack of oxygen kills the appetitie. The Terracotta Warriors takes students to the Shaaanxi Province of China, and then back in time as they observe the life-size army of figures being restored there.

From the familiar to the fantastic, the eighteen books of The Magic Bookshelves provides a feast of self-selected reading. Books are written at a vocabulary level of second to third grade, but the wide-ranging subjects and vivid multimedia elements make this collection of interest to most readers whatever their age.

Resources to Download

Alternatively, you can install the books and then open individual books using the included Bookreaders. However, letting students choose their own books from the shelves is an important component of the experience, so we hope that you will take advantage of this technology and install the two bookshelves into My Own Bookshelf®. You can purchase My Own Bookshelf® as well as this application bundled with one or more of the Learning Magic book collections from this web site. For details on bundles, click here.

To keep track of which books a student has read, Learning Magic has created an 8.5" x 14" poster to print with all 18 books pictured in their places on the two bookshelves. Markers are also included so that a student could put a marker saying "I Read It!" on each book on the poster upon completion. Both these documents are included on the CD as PDF files. You can click to download the poster right here to see for yourself!