As School House Rock has taught us, education can be fun. Here's more proof: Disney and VTech have joined forces to bring you Create-A-Story ($49.99), an interactive book that lets your child read along with, and even build, their own stories. The game is intended for children between the ages of 3 and 6 years old. It can be used alone or you can easily plug it into a TV to interact with the characters.

Create-A-Story comes with two books--Read-A-Story and Create-A-Story--and a software cartridge. You simply place the software cartridge in the back of the console and place one of the books in the center, then interact by using the stylus pen. The game has Volume Control buttons, as well as Mute and Help buttons. Your kid can also listen to the game through earphones, which will be nice for you.

Read-A-Story lets your child hear a story and play various learning games. Touch words with the stylus pen to hear them sounded out . When the entire story is read, the words are highlighted on the screen to associate how the word looks with how the word sounds.

The Create-A-Story booklet lets your child create, and if plugged into the TV, animate their own stories. Personalize it by entering his or her name in the beginning. Then, if you're using the TV version, the story reads "By Jenny," for example, and congratulates her at the end. Choose characters, settings and actions, and then watch the animated story on the TV screen.

Part of the appeal of Create-A-Story is that you can take it on-the-go or have it plugged into your TV, but I think it loses interest when it's not plugged in. The whole point is that you can see and interact with the characters on the screen--and without that, it's really not as entertaining.

Create-A-Story teaches reading skills, creativity, story making, uppercase and lowercase letters, word identification, phonics, rhyming words, syllables, punctuation, and colors. Depending on the age of your child, he or she could easily fly through the two books and want more. Fortunately, you can buy more books to use in the console, including Cars, Disney Princess: Cinderella & Sleeping Beauty, Finding Nemo, and Mickey Mouse Clubhouse. Each new package comes with two booklets and one software cartridge for $19.99.