Apple is launching iBooks 2 for iPad, featuring iBooks textbooks, an entirely new kind of textbook that’s dynamic, engaging and truly interactive. iBooks textbooks offer iPad users fullscreen textbooks with interactive animations, diagrams, photos, videos, unrivaled navigation and much more. Apple is also setting up a textbook section its iTunes store.

iBooks 2 will be able to display books with videos and other interactive features for elementary and high school students, the company announced Thursday at an event at an event at the Guggenheim Museum in New York. It’s not clear how Apple plans to get it front of students, however, since textbooks are subject to lengthy approval processes by states. Also, few students have iPads, which start at $499.

Apple also revealed iBook Author, an application for Macs that lets people create electronic textbooks.

Among the launch titles will be two high school textbooks — Biology and Environmental Science — from Pearson PLC and five from McGraw-Hill. They will cost $15 or less, said Phil Schiller, Apple’s head of marketing.

“Education is deep in Apple’s DNA and iPad may be our most exciting education product yet. With 1.5 million iPads already in use in education institutions, including over 1,000 one-to-one deployments, iPad is rapidly being adopted by schools across the US and around the world,” said Philip Schiller, Apple’s senior vice president of Worldwide Marketing.

The new iBooks 2 app is available today as a free download from the App Store. Lets students study and learn in more efficient and effective ways than ever before with the new iBooks 2 app.