Eric and I were lucky enough to be treated to a sneak preview of Disney Digital Books last week. Just imagine having an interactive library of over 500 Disney stories, both classics and new adventures on your computer, and you’ll be on the right track. I’m not talking about the plain old grayscale Kindle kind of ebook – these are beautifully illustrated, full-color books, with pages you can turn on-screen just an inch at a time or virtually flip through with a sweep of the mouse.

As well as being able to choose books featuring a ton of Disney characters, the subscription based service also gives young readers a bunch of extra bells and whistles to play with. You can store a personal library of favorites, and share them with your friends, using the simple selection of pre-written messages to send along with your suggestion.

What I really like about the website and the reading experience, is that even though the core of the site is built around Flash animation, it really doesn’t go down the road of being overly animated and distracting. It could have been so easy to add countless little instances of characters winking, waving, and generally making a hubbub, but instead the focus is totally on the reading experience. That being said, the page turning animation of the book itself is very clever, and a large dictionary of words can be clicked on and listened to.

Of course we’re talking about books on a computer here. It’s hard to envision reading bedtime stories with it, even with a laptop. I’m sure many parents will be concerned about the physical and emotional experience of reading together with their child, but from a young users perspective, the content medium doesn’t matter.

You can already preview a bunch of books for free on the Disney Digital Books website, so take a look. The service just launched today, but I’m already certain it’s going to be something special.