High and Low Tech Reading Ideas

I am lucky at the moment that BB and LF love story time, especially BB - so I don't have to think of much other than great books to entice them.  But I am fully aware that this might change and so I am keeping my eyes open for cool new ideas to encourage reading.

The high-tech option:  We haven't tried it yet, but I found a mention of Readeo in a parenting mag.  It seems like a super cool service through which you can video chat and read a book with a child at the same time.  They call it BookChat.  I call it cool.  So we are going to sign up for the free trial offer and try it out with Mimi.  I will keep you posted once we try it, to let you know how it goes.

The low-tech option:  I was at a salvage yard today and BB bee lined it for what looked like a sweet little playhouse.  As I stood there waiting for him to agree to come back out, I looked down at the for sale sign and noticed that they were calling it a reading house.  On closer inspection I noticed that one outside wall was made an inbuilt bookcase (which created a little shelf on the inside too) and the roof had a little lip at the over-hang so that you could place books or magazines along the roof too.  The inside was pretty plain and just big enough for a couple of bean bags, a chair and table or whatever.

I was thinking to myself that it seems like a pretty cosy way for a little one to curl up with a book and feel like they were in a world of their own.  Also, I am guessing that this was meant to be an indoor reading house, so you would need a pretty big space, but I bet if you made the shelves on the inside, rather than out, you could have this in a backyard too.

My description probably didn't do it justice, so I will try to draw and scan the basics of this house, in case you want to make one for your own little ones.

Lastly - and back to high-tech, I am thinking a lot lately about children's ebooks.  My next move is probably going to be to download a few and see what BB and LF think of them.  I don't have an e-reader other than, I suppose, my laptop and my iphone, but that should suffice to get started.  I want to know more about the options before we jump to buying an actual dedicated reader.

What are your thoughts on e-readers for children's books?  I would love to heard from readers and authors alike.  Also, if you use them, which do you use and can anyone tell me how the graphics look on the Nook?

That's all for me.  I need to recover from the festivities this weekend of celebrating LF's 1st Birthday.