Before author Bob Katz describes the powerful and inclusive circle that Elaine Moore creates through her fourth-graders in Eagle River, Alaska, he tells us about her voice. In fact, he devotes the entire first chapter of his book, Elaine's Circle: A Teacher, A Student, A Classroom and One Unforgettable Year to her "soft, languid, unaffected" voice.

Elaine's voice is the key to the book's climax, when this soft-spoken teacher shocks a roomful of people with a passionate shout - a surprising punctuation to the subdued, intimate community we watch her help create.

This satisfying book tells the story of Seamus Farrell, Elaine's eager, mischievous student, who is diagnosed with a brain tumor shortly before Christmas 1992. The illness hits him hard, and as his parents rally the best medical care they can find, his classmates and the larger community pull together to support him.

The story of a sick boy seems ordained to be gloomy. But Elaine's Circle is entertaining and uplifting, filled with drama and inspiration, because it tells us not just about illness, but about a community's positive and healthy reaction to illness.

Elaine is the catalyst. Long before Seamus is diagnosed, she has initiated her fourth- graders into one of her many unorthodox teaching methods: Circle Time. There, sitting on the floor, the students start each day by sharing their thoughts and stories. During Circle Time, they can talk about anything, as long as it's connected to something they care about and could consider writing about during Writers' Workshop, later in the morning.

"The key to making Circle Time work, in Elaine's estimation, was making sure the children were committed to the process of talking, listening and respecting each other. 'You can't just put people in a group and call it a community,' she liked to say."

Circle Time was critical to Elaine's mission, which she saw as nothing less than preparing the kids for life. "A circle, Elaine explained, has no beginning and no end. Native American groups recognize the power of the circle. It is universal symbol of wholeness. The circle exists throughout our work in many manifestations, if only we know where to look."

When the children learn that Seamus can no longer come to school, they feel his absence in their circle. They propose taking the class to him and having their lessons at his house.

The impracticality of taking 25 students out of school every day was obvious. But instead of nixing the idea, Elaine tries to modify it. What if they took groups of three or four children to Seamus's house each day? What if they went during lunchtime, driven by parent volunteers, like a field trip? They would take work sheets and teach lessons, and correct the work sheets on a later visit. In addition to maintaining the community of their circle, Elaine hit on an excellent motivating tool: the fourth- graders had to learn the material themselves in order to earn the right to teach it to Seamus.

Principal Arge Jeffrey drops in throughout the book to play the lesser villain (the larger villain being, of course, the tumor), but even he comes around to the plan the fourth-graders and their imaginative teacher hatch. And so Seamus remains a part of Elaine's circle. His physical deterioration, hair loss and illness-related weight gain become a natural and customary part of the children's lives, too.

Elaine, who had cancer herself a few years earlier, marveled at the children's reactions. During one visit, Seamus talks about severe headaches and the medication he took that didn't always work. "Watching this, Elaine was dazzled by Seamus's openness in sharing his trauma with his classmates. This get-together was so unlike her own experience with adults in the aftermath of her cancer. Then, people might see her coming down the aisle at the grocery store and veer away to avoid having to . . . what? Think about it? Make small talk about it? Put their pity into words? Confront their own mortality? Simply say they were sorry?"

Near the book's end, Seamus receives a quilt comprised of squares created by his classmates, along with a note from each child describing the artwork for Seamus. "Each drawing, each note was a bridge linking him to the world he loved, the world of Ravenwood School. His family was great. His parents and brothers were as compassionate and fun as a boy could want. But there was a world outside of family, a larger family that had embraced him. It had been his biggest fear when he first learned of the cancer, bigger than his fear of death - the fear that he would no longer be part of Elaine's circle. That fear had proved false."

With this book, Katz gives a hopeful, inspiring example of people uniting through one family's misfortune, giving strength and solace to all.

Sarah Peasley's work has appeared in the Washington Post Style and Travel sections. She lives in Littleton.