Learn a language by reading a story

This idea came to me when walking home from French class one day. Would it be possible to learn to read a language just by reading a story? I'll give you an example so you know what I mean.

John met Mary on his way to the store.
"Good day, Mary!", he said.
"Bonjour John", she replied smiling.

In this short piece we have introduced the French word bonjour in an understandable way. The next piece would then introduce a new word and include the old word.

Later Mary saw Jane in her car.
"Bonjour Jane", she said.
"Bonjour Mary", dit Jane.

If you included colours to join the words and what they mean together, such as "Good day" and "Bonjour" you could clarify things a little more and then later on you could have a popup on mouse over where if someone had forgotten the meaning of a word the popup would give the word used in it's original way. So mousing over "Bonjour" would pop up,

"Bonjour John", she replied smiling.

With bonjour in the original colour for extra reinforcement.

I don't know whether it could be done or whether it would be any real help to people but it is an interesting idea. We learn better from stories than repeating the conjugations of parle, etc...Perhaps that could be used to our advantage.