StarWalk Kids Media has announced that it has made all 160-plus ebooks in its collection available free of charge for anyone with Internet access—children, families, and educators—during the entire month of July. In just the first three days after the initiative was launched via Twitter (#PopUpLibrary), nearly 3,000 ebooks have been read, the company says.

Anyone who visits www.StarWalkKids.com/popup can immediately read any ebook in the collection, which is about 60 percent highly illustrated nonfiction.

“We celebrated our first year of existence at the American Library Association national conference in Chicago,” says StarWalk founder and author Seymour Simon. “We all felt that it was time to give back. Opening our streaming collection for everyone to sample and share with kids via summer reading programs felt like the right way to say ‘thanks’ for a great year.”

Liz Nealon, StarWalk Kids Media’s publisher, says that the company hopes educators, administrators and librarians will also take this opportunity to sample the library prior to the start of the new school year. “More schools and libraries are acquiring the latest educational technologies, supported by broadband Internet connectivity,” she says. “But…the hardware is only as relevant as the software available to use with it. There has been a severe shortage of quality literature, both fiction and nonfiction, that is available and affordable in digital form. We formed StarWalk Kids Media to fill that void.”

Open access to all eBooks in the StarWalk Kids collection will continue throughout the month of July.