The Pierce County Library System will feature the best-selling book, “Three Cups of Tea” by authors Greg Mortenson and David Oliver Relin as the 2009 Pierce County READS event.

The event begins Monday and will run through March 28.

The goal of the READS program is for people to read, share and talk about the same book at the same time during the community one-book program. During the program, people may participate in more than 40 free programs and events on topics including literacy, mountaineer search and rescue, mountain climbing and volunteering.

“Three Cups of Tea” is the true story of a man’s mission to promote peace, one school at a time. It transports a mountain climber into a school builder/fundraiser to help children – especially girls – in significantly impoverished, illiterate and uneducated Pakistan and Afghanistan villages. The premise of building the schools is to replace bombs with books, guns with pencils and rhetoric with reading in order to gain an educated society that can help itself.

At the conclusion of the program, there will be presentation and book signing by Relin at Clover Park Technical College in Lakewood at 7 p.m. March 14.