The Wall Street Journal has confirmed that Amazon will be announcing a bigger, more textbooky Kindle tomorrow that will go into the hands of college students after summer break:

Beginning this fall, some students at Case Western Reserve University in Cleveland will be given large-screen Kindles with textbooks for chemistry, computer science and a freshman seminar already installed, said Lev Gonick, the school’s chief information officer. The university plans to compare the experiences of students who get the Kindles and those who use traditional textbooks, he said. Amazon has worked out a deal with several textbook publishers to make their materials available for the device, Mr. Gonick added. The new device will also feature a more fully functional Web browser, he said. [wsj]

It seems kind of unfortunate that the none of the test beds for this new reading miracle are in Amazon’s hometown — it’s not as if the Seattle area is devoid of undergraduates who might be great test cases for cool electronics.
Engadget has a grainy picture [#] and there is, of course, no shortage of skeptics:

• “Large-Screen Kindle Won’t Mean Squat if Apple Tablet Arrives” [wired]
• “Why a Giant Kindle Still Won’t Be the Perfect Ebook Reader” [gizmodo]
• Valleywag’s outgoing perma-hater says: “Why the Large-Format Kindle Is Not a Life Raft for Newspapers” [gawker]