Bear in mind that some people are more visual, so I think the interactive visualization should serve as a complement to the 100-1000 words that describe it, not an in-place substitution... (Also, let's not forget about the visually impaired, which need the interface to be accessible).
On average, vision is by far the most important sense for a human. Would you reduce the experience for most people in order to help the minority, especially when there already exist so many text-first books?
