Remarkable 'Joy of Books' Animation Brings Books to Life [VIRAL VIDEO]

Each day, Mashable highlights one noteworthy YouTube video. Check out all our viral video picks.

Relax and enjoy the magic that ensues when you combine a bookstore full of books, skillful stop-motion animation, haunting music, a boatload of creativity and 28 volunteers: The Joy of Books is a brilliant video by Sean Ohlenkamp.

Just when we were thinking books were dead, along comes this video that's so impressed the denizens of YouTube, 2.5 million people have viewed it since its debut earlier this month.

Those books didn't just jump and dance around the bookshelves by themselves, either. Ohlenkamp wasn't specific about how long it took for him and his 27 volunteers to create this masterpiece, but he did thank "all the volunteer hands who shelved and re-shelved books all night, every night." He also thanked Composer Grayson Matthews for the beautiful custom music you hear.

"We spent many sleepless nights moving, stacking, and animating books at Type bookstore in Toronto," Ohlenkamp says, adding that he got the idea for this carefully choreographed bookstore extravaganza when he and his wife were organizing their own bookshelf a year ago.

By the way, don't miss the clever part where the Fred Astaire and Ginger Rogers books dance with each other.

Watching this video made me think about the importance of old-fashioned books, still playing a role even in my techno-environment that's been almost taken over by digital content. Even though I enjoy reading books using Amazon Kindle software on an iPad 2, I still enjoy the tactile feeling of reading a real book, the smell of fresh newsprint or musty book dust, and the ability to see how much of the book I've read at a glance as it's sitting on my nightstand.