I Read

WHAT DOES it take for a rising college sophomore, who has successfully held two previous jobs, to get a job in this town? I returned home from college May 18 with grand expectations: I would find a hip job at a record shop, some hole-in-the-wall coffee joint, maybe even Baltimore's epicenter of obscure coolness, the Charles Theatre. No McDonald's or baby-sitting for me. The first time I opened the City Paper classified section, it took my breath away. So many opportunities. I could do anything.

Portraits 9 / 11 / 01: The Collected "Portraits of Grief" from The New York Times, foreword by Howell Raines and introduction by Janny Scott (Times Books, 688 pages, $30). The last publication in which most readers would have expected to find an exquisiteness of microjournalism is The Times. Yet day after day from shortly after the World Trade Center horror for 14 weeks and then episodically afterward, there were one or two full pages of tiny pieces about victims. For some people I know, the miniature obituaries became a compulsion -- they literally could not get through the day without reading some or all of them.

The student: Hajin Kim,16 School: Howard High Special achievement: Hajin earned a 1600 on her SAT, the highest possible score. A candidate for the National Honor Society, Hajin is a member of her school's math team and captain of the tennis team. She plays violin with the school orchestra and has a black belt in tae kwon do. What factors led to her SAT accomplishment? "I have had very, very good teachers in math," Hajin said. "They laid such a good foundation that helped me a lot. And the English - I read so many books when I was a kid. I was such a bookworm.

I have always loved anthologies. As a kid, I had a dozen or more, which I went back to again and again. Mostly prose, but plenty of poetry -- Lewis Carroll, most certainly, Keats, a good deal of Kipling -- hardly respectable these days (though, well, perhaps terrorism will yield a revival). I have some of them still, though sadly not all. I still pull them down, as I do books I have read long since. I read a few pages, mostly familiar ones. I cannot imagine a life without that companionship, books' magical power to ignite and sustain the heart and mind.

THE KIDS, AND there were plenty of them in the crowded auditorium, saw Henry Winkler as a brilliant and very funny speaker, a man who overcame dyslexia to become a successful actor, producer and director. But when I looked at the stage at Calvert Hall College High School in Towson, I saw the character Winkler made famous: the Fonz, that leather-jacketed greaser of Happy Days. He's a quarter-century older now, silver-haired, a little wider at the waist. But still he's the Fonz. I expected Winkler to turn thumbs up and render Fonzie's patented "Aaayh!"

"You should read There Was an Old Lady Who Swallowed a Fly by Pam Adams. I feel this is a sad story because she dies. It's also funny because animals eats each other. Read it, it will make you laugh!" Molly Hobson Charles Carroll Elementary "Sunset of the Sabertooth by Mary Pope Osborne is from the Magic Tree House series. In this book, Jack and Annie go to the ice age. While they are there, they see a sabertooth and a woolly mammoth. This book is so good!" Mon Spring Garden Elementary "I read the book Through My Eyes, an autobiography by Ruby Bridges.

"I read the book Go Dog. Go! by P. D. Eastman. I liked it best when they had a party on a tree. P.D. Eastman is my favorite author." -- Victoria Lynn vanDommelen Charlesmont Elementary "Would you eat fried worms? That is what Billy had to do in the book How to Eat Fried Worms by Thomas Rockwell. Billy makes a $50 bet with Alan that he can eat 15 worms in 15 days. Billy tries many different things to help himself eat the worms, like adding mustard, ketchup and peanut butter on top. Billy wanted the $50 so he could buy a mini-bike.

"Joan of Arc by Josephine Poole is an awesome book with greatly detailed pictures -- especially the armor and horses. It also contains very descriptive text. At one point in the book, the light is described as bright and clear. When it goes away, the author writes: 'The heavenly light paled to sunshine.' At the back of the book, there is a list of chronological events. This well-written book will remain in your memory for years to come." -- Katy Rennenkampf Jeffers Hill Elementary "I read Camp Knock Knock by Betsy Duffey.

I DON'T REMEMBER reading Winnie-the-Pooh, but I remember having the Pooh stories read to me by teachers and by my mother in the late 1940s. I saw them then as the humorous adventures of a loveable bear - "the Bear of Very Little Brain" - blundering through life knowing less than I. That was the fun of the Pooh stories. The characters were so like us. Or, as someone says in "Winnie-the-Pooh," published 75 years ago this fall, "Some have brains, and some don't. And there it is." For example, when Pooh and Piglet set out to put on a birthday party for Eeyore, "the old, grey Donkey," we 7-year-olds saw trouble coming.

" `Mr. Brown Can Moo, Can You?' by Dr. Seuss is a book about sounds. Mr. Brown is the main character." Holland Turner Carter G. Woodson Elementary "If I were to grade the book `Yesterday's Horses' by Jean Slaughter Doty on a scale from one to 10, I would give it an 11. The main character is a girl named Katy, whose mom is a veterinarian. She has a horse named Rusty. The main problem starts when Katy finds a prehistoric foal - Zipper - in the mountains. Zipper is supposed to be extinct.