Read This Book

" 'The Three Little Pigs,' by JonScieszka and illustrated by Lane Smith. The main character is the wolf. You should read this book because you will have lots of laughter."- Devin BakerFederal Hill Elementary"I like 'Charlotte's Web' by E.B. White and pictures by Gart Williams. Wilbur is a pig. He was a runt. He is now a big pig. Charlotte is going to save Wilbur so he will not die. She had to spin a kind of web. Charlotte died. Wilbur was sad, very sad. But he had her children."- Clarisse BidadIlchester Elementary"One of my favorite books is 'Just Grandma and Me' by Merce Mayer.

" 'The Absolutely True Story: How I Visited Yellowstone Park with the Terrible Rupes' by Willo Davis Roberts is about a mystery that happens on a trip to Yellowstone. I think you should read this book." -- Brittany Carter Oakleigh Elementary " 'Toenails, Tonsils and Tornadoes' by Bonnie Pryor is about Martin Snodgrass. His family is having a reunion. During the reunion, a tornado strikes. He tells everyone and they get to safety in time. I think you will like this book." -- Caitlin Ortolani Abingdon Elementary " 'Mike Mulligan and the Steam Shovel' by Virginia Lee Burton is a very good book.

" 'Get That Girl Out of the Locker Room' was written by Elaine Moore. I liked this story because it was funny. Michelle was on the basketball team and she wanted to play football, too. She went into the boys' locker room and she pretended to be a boy. If you like funny books, then you should read this book."- Dandrea White, Grade 3Powhatan Elementary"I think 'Maniac Magee' by Jerry Spinelli is a great book. One reason I like this book is because it is not a book like 'Goosebumps.' Now 'Goosebumps' has lots of violence and 'Maniac Magee' does not have any violence at all. This book was so good I could not lay the book down until I was done."

" 'The Curse of the Mummy's Tomb' by R.L. Stine is about a boy named Gabe who explores an old pyramid with his cousin Sari and Uncle Ben. This book is cool because lots of mummies come out and save the kids from a bad guy. My favorite part was when the mummies came to life."-- Curt PhillipsVilla Cresta Elementary"In 'Toy Story' by Marshall Kimmans, a boy named Andy has two toys, a Woody and a Buzz Lightyear. He got the Buzz Lightyear for his birthday. Woody was jealous of him. If you like adventure stories, read this book."

By Warren St. John Spiegel & Grau/307 pages/$24.95 You can read this book or wait for the movie, but the book is worth the effort. This story is too textured, too filled with layers of light and dark, for Hollywood to capture its complexity. In January 2007, New York Times reporter Warren St. John wrote about the Fugees, a team of soccer-playing misfits from a dozen war-ravaged countries transplanted to the small Georgia town of Clarkston. The article prompted a huge response - tons of donated cash and equipment, plus a book contract for St. John and a movie deal that financed a team bus and a new school, the Fugees Academy.

Imade the mistake last week of delivering a tongue-in-cheek critique of Kindle2, Amazon's new e-book reader. Soon, that Read Street post, playfully called "10 reasons to hate the Kindles," sparked a nasty online backlash. Milder examples of the constructive criticism included the words knee-jerk, idiotic, pompous and incoherent. Others are unsuitable for a family newspaper. What started it all? Here's my list: 1. You can't leave it lying on your beach towel when you doze off at Ocean City.

The New York Times asked five experts for their pick of the best book on Afghanistan. Larry P. Goodson, an associate professor of international studies at Bentley College and the author of Afghanistan's Endless War: State Failure, Regional Politics, and the Rise of the Taliban. Ahmed Rashid's Taliban: Militant Islam, Oil and Fundamentalism in Central Asia, although redundantly subtitled, is my favorite reference on the Taliban movement. Richly detailed, the book grows out of Rashid's more than two decades of reporting from the region.

"Marcel Proust: A Life," by William C. Carter. Yale University Press. 1,024 pages. $35. When considering a book like this, which is more than 1,000 pages, one is forced to confront the sheer size of the thing, and when you consider this heft, if not bulk, it seems that large scale in books is a lot like large scale in other pursuits, such as the accumulation of money. Size is intimidating. In fact, it is difficult to conceive of the devotion that has gone into William C. Carter's "Marcel Proust: A Life," although, to be perfectly honest, there are times when one's eyes glaze over, as though contemplating some other exceedingly difficult and detailed operation, the building of a sailing ship out of kitchen matches, for instance.

"Annals of the Former World," by John A. McPhee. Farrar, Straus and Giroux. 624 pages, with 25 maps. $40. Annals of the Former World" is a seven hundred page block of a book about geology-specifically, the geology of the United States as seen from Interstate 80 on its transcontinental run from New York to San Francisco. Not only is this book about old stuff; it is old stuff.Except for a 40-page chapter called "Crossing the Craton," this volume consists of four books ("Basin and Range," "In Suspect Terrain," "Rising From the Plains," and "Assembling California")

If you live in White Plains, N.Y., you should be at least halfway through The Pearl, by John Steinbeck. In Georgia, it's time to finish up Janisse Ray's Ecology of a Cracker Childhood. Canadian residents? You're supposed to be reading In the Skin of a Lion, unless you live in Vancouver, in which case you should also be reading The Jade Peony. If the idea of your local, state or federal government guiding your choice of reading seems far-fetched - sort of the reverse of Ray Bradbury's Fahrenheit 451, which residents of Lafayette, Ind., were advised to start this month - look again.