hyperscript is a perfectly good alternative and uses the same interface as matt esch's virtual-dom

A JavaScript DOM model supporting element creation, diff computation and patch operations for efficient re-rendering

virtual-dom exposes a set of objects designed for representing DOM nodes. A "Document Object Model Model" might seem like a strange term, but it is exactly that. It's a native JavaScript tree structure that represents a native DOM node tree.

virtual-dom is a collection of modules designed to provide a declarative way of representing the DOM for your app. So instead of updating the DOM when your application state changes, you simply create a virtual tree or VTree, which looks like the DOM state that you want. virtual-dom will then figure out how to make the DOM look like this efficiently without recreating all of the DOM nodes.