The Book of Three

My teacher read this to my class in sixth grade, but I'd forgotten 99 percent of it. That one percent stuck with me for decades and I decided to give it another look last week.

I'm not a big fantasy fan and kids' books usually leave me cold, but I thought this was a great book. Alexander's writing is simple but has enough details to give the world some flavor. He never lets the story get bogged down, and a really decent philosophy comes through:

Be kind to everyone and everything that isn't actively trying to kill you. Help where you can. Don't refuse help from others. And from a bonus story in the back of the 50th Anniversary edition: “It is better to be raising things up than smiting things down.”