SCHOOL'S OUT!

'School's Out!' collects some of Ruskin Bond's best stories for children, put together as a summer holiday read. It opens with the feeling every schoolchild knows: the clock crawling toward the final bell, a plan for the holidays already forming, and then the sudden freedom when school lets out.

The stories travel through streets, tunnels and forests, on tongas, trains and bicycles, in the company of friends both old and new. In one, a boy named Romi hopes a fire and a damaged bridge will keep him away from school for a good long while, while his friend Teju points out that the river can simply be walked across.

Written in the easy, warm style of the writer of the hills, these stories make a pleasant companion for the holidays.