An ebook is represented as ebook pages associated with locations. An interface for navigating the ebook pages includes a smart scrubber. Positions on the smart scrubber correspond to locations of ebook pages. The smart scrubber includes contextual icons that represent contextual information associated with a location in the ebook. To generate the scrubber, contextual information is obtained and selected for display based on selection criteria. Contextual icons representing the selected contextual information are placed on the smart scrubber in positions corresponding to their associated locations. A navigation command directed at a position on the smart scrubber (or a contextual icon at that position) results in display of the ebook page at the location corresponding to that position. One example contextual icon is a page restore thumbnail representing the last page read, which is selected for display when the smart scrubber is used to navigate away from the last page read.