React Book Reader 📖

A beautiful, mobile-first React component for displaying long-form text with a book-like reading experience.

Demo: https://umuterturk.github.io/react-book-reader/

Features

• 📱 Mobile-first design - Optimized for touch devices with swipe navigation
• 📐 Word-precise pagination - Text never cuts off mid-word or mid-line
• 💾 Reading position persistence - Automatically saves and restores reading position
• 🎨 Beautiful typography - Elegant serif fonts with proper line height and spacing
• 🌙 Dark mode support - Automatically adapts to system preferences
• ⌨️ Keyboard navigation - Arrow keys, space bar for desktop users
• 📍 Click-to-navigate page numbers - Jump to any page instantly
• 🔄 Responsive - Adapts to any screen size with proper centering on desktop
• ✨ Smooth animations - Page turn animations with rubber-band effect at boundaries

Installation

npm install react-book-experience

Usage

import { BookReader } from 'react-book-experience';
import 'react-book-experience/styles.css';

function App() {
  const bookText = `Your long book text goes here...`;

  return (
    <BookReader
      id="my-book-1"
      text={bookText}
      title="The Great Adventure"
      author="Jane Doe"
    />
  );
}

Props

Prop	Type	Required	Description
id	string	✅	Unique identifier for the book. Used for storing reading position in localStorage.
text	string	✅	The full text content of the book.
title	string	-	Book title. Displayed on the cover page and as a running header.
author	string	-	Author name. Displayed on the cover page.
contentRegion	Partial<ContentRegion>	-	Custom padding for the content area.

ContentRegion

interface ContentRegion {
  top: number;    // Top padding as % of viewport height (default: 8)
  bottom: number; // Bottom padding as % of viewport height (default: 6)
  left: number;   // Left padding as % of page width (default: 5)
  right: number;  // Right padding as % of page width (default: 5)
}

Examples

Basic Usage

<BookReader
  id="book-1"
  text={myBookText}
/>

With Title and Author (Cover Page)

<BookReader
  id="book-1"
  text={myBookText}
  title="Pride and Prejudice"
  author="Jane Austen"
/>

Custom Content Region

<BookReader
  id="book-1"
  text={myBookText}
  title="My Book"
  contentRegion={{
    top: 10,
    bottom: 8,
    left: 8,
    right: 8,
  }}
/>

Multiple Books

Each book maintains its own reading position:

function Library() {
  return (
    <>
      <BookReader id="book-1" text={book1Text} title="First Book" />
      <BookReader id="book-2" text={book2Text} title="Second Book" />
    </>
  );
}

Navigation

Action	Mobile	Desktop
Next page	Swipe left / Tap right side	Arrow Right / Down / Space / Click button
Previous page	Swipe right / Tap left side	Arrow Left / Up / Click button
Go to page	Click page number	Click page number

Styling

The component uses CSS custom properties for theming. You can override these in your CSS:

.book-reader {
  --page-bg: #fdf8f0;
  --text-color: #2d2926;
  --page-shadow: 0 2px 20px rgba(0, 0, 0, 0.08);
  --footer-text: #8a847d;
  --transition-speed: 200ms;
}

Dark Mode

Dark mode is automatic based on system preferences. Override with:

@media (prefers-color-scheme: dark) {
  .book-reader {
    --page-bg: #1a1816;
    --text-color: #d4cfc8;
  }
}

Recommended Global Styles

For the best mobile experience, add these styles to your app to prevent pull-to-refresh interference:

body {
  overscroll-behavior-y: contain;
}

TypeScript

Full TypeScript support with exported types:

import { BookReader, BookReaderProps, ContentRegion } from 'react-book-experience';

Browser Support

• Modern browsers (Chrome, Firefox, Safari, Edge)
• iOS Safari
• Android Chrome

License

MIT © Umut Erturk