An interactive multimedia book provides hands-on multimedia instruction to the user in response to voiced commands. The book is implemented on an easy to use computer system which is suitable to various environments in which the book might be used. The interactive multimedia book is published on a computer readable medium with the necessary software to support the interactive operation of the book. Alternatively, the book may be downloaded form a remote site using a network, such as the Internet, in which case the content of the book and the necessary software are copied to a local medium, such as a computer hard disk. The content includes both text and audio/video clips. The interactive multimedia book is accessed by a computer system which is equipped with a microphone and voice recognition software. Voiced commands and natural language queries are the primary user input to the computer system. The computer system is also equipped with a high resolution display, a voice synthesizer and a speaker or headphone system to provide output to the user. A combination headphone and directional microphone can be especially convenient in some environments as, for example, the wood shop where the headphones allow the user to better hear the instruction over the din of machine noise while at the same time protecting the user's hearing. The displayed text is written in a markup language, such as HyperText Markup Language (HTML), and contains hyperlinks which link the current topic with other related topics. The user may command the book to read the text and, as the text is read by the voice synthesizer, a word which is also a hyperlink will change its attributes upon being spoken. The user will be able to observe or hear this and, without having to click a mouse button, simply utter the word which is the hyperlink to navigate to the linked topic.