ONE DAY LAST WEEK I read Voltaire's "Candide" for the first time since college.

I read it at home, in my study, on a computer screen, straining through the bottom of my bifocals, getting a stiff neck, just as I do when reading a book.

I'd stumbled on "Candide" while browsing some literary Web sites. I might as well have happened on the book while browsing at the public library.

Though I had read lots of text, even some literary text, over many years of working and e-mailing on the computer, "Candide" was the first book I'd read online, "cover to cover."

I could have taken "Candide" to bed in a leather-bound electronic book. It's the latest gizmo in the ever-changing cyberworld, and your child could soon be reading one at a school near you.

The Maryland State Department of Education applied last week for a federal grant to try out the e-book in the libraries and classrooms of Damascus High School in Montgomery County and Washington High School in Somerset County.

The electronic books would be used initially in social studies and science, said Gail Bailey, the department's chief of library media services. Each school would get about 150 electronic books with accompanying kits designed to help teachers with lessons. The e-books would be placed in a bank in the two schools' media centers and in classrooms, where they could be taken home by students.

The e-book is a small, portable computer that can give access to more than one book. One company that wants to do business in Maryland is SoftBook, a product of SoftBook Press in Silicon Valley, Calif. Demonstrated at a technology conference this winter in Baltimore, it's about the size of a large book -- with a 9 1/2-inch screen and a soft leather cover. Open the cover, and the book lights up, ready to be read. To download books, the reader plugs a phone line into a built-in modem.

The electronic book "really becomes a multimedia device," said Victor McCrary, a researcher at the information technology laboratory of the National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST) in Gaithersburg.

McCrary has employed Montgomery County high school students (who speak the language) in experimenting with e-book prototypes that include pictures and video. "What we have right now in our lab, for example, is the text of 'The Wizard of Oz.' Then you can press a key and see Dorothy. Then you can press another key and see her going down the yellow brick road."

McCrary sees the e-book, at least initially, as a supplement to the standard textbook. A paper physics textbook, for example, could describe momentum. The electronic supplement could show momentum. But, according to Bailey, most mainstream text publishers have shied away from the new technology, fearing, among other things, infringement on their copyrights as instructors insert their own material.

One of the advantages of the e-book, McCrary said, is that it should save paper.

People aren't inclined to read books by constantly scrolling, as I read "Candide." The required eye movement is physically stressful and gives some people headaches. So they lose patience and tap a key to make a printout from their computer. Electronic book pages are identical to paper book pages, and readers flip pages easily in both versions.

As with any new technology, there are problems. Batteries need charging after only a few hours. The books are quite expensive. At least early on, paperback books will be less costly, but Bailey said she hopes the electronic book will save money -- not to mention storage space -- in the long run.

There's also the danger that the handful of companies in the e-book market won't settle on standard operating procedures. That's one reason NIST was host to a national electronic book conference last fall, offering its services to ensure that electronic books are "interoperable." (No one wants a repeat of the Beta-VHS debacle in the videocassette recorder industry.)

With all of this, McCrary believes the e-book is here to stay. "They weren't successful when they were first introduced years ago, but now they're truly portable, have the look and feel of the real book and are readable," he said. "Furthermore, you can download so much more now."

Another literary giant whose oeuvre I discovered while surfing last week is the American poet Walt Whitman. Scrolling through "Leaves of Grass," I came upon "I Sing the Body Electric."

From the last century, could Whitman have had the electronic book in mind?

Literary Web sites

A few Web sites for literary exploration:

Classic short stories: http: //www.bnl.com/shorts/

Classics such as Aesop's Fables: http: //classics.mit.edu/

The poetry of Margaret Walker:

http: //sunsite.unc.edu/ipa/

Shakespeare: http: //www.gh.cs. usyd.edu.au/(tilde)matty/Shakespeare/

Folk and fairy tales: http://darsie.ucdavis.edu/tales/.