At precisely five seconds before noon Wednesday, the students started counting down.

Five, four, three, two, one.

And then, on the stroke of noon, 220 students from Roanoke's Fallon Park Elementary School started reading together out loud.

" 'Salutations!' said the voice."

"Wilbur jumped to his feet. 'Salu-what?' he cried."

If this sounds vaguely familiar, it should. It's a passage from E.B. White's 1952 novel "Charlotte's Web," a story of a spider "about the size of a gumdrop" who befriends a pig and saves him from a farmer's ax.

In schools and libraries around the world, roughly a half-million people had signed up to read the same passage at the same exact time. About 60 of them were at Glenvar Elementary School in Roanoke County. Another 230 or so were at Prices Fork Elementary School in Blacksburg and nine more were at Roanoke's main library.

The readers were taking part in an attempt to break the world record for the most people reading aloud simultaneously in multiple locations.

If all those people actually read the passage, they would shatter the previous record of 155,528, held by children in the United Kingdom who read William Wordsworth's poem "Daffodils" in 2004.

The Fallon Park students, third-, fourth- and fifth-graders, continued reading as Charlotte, a barn spider and the owner of the voice, introduces herself to Wilbur, a piglet.

Since it was published the book has become a classic of children's literature and a staple of elementary school classrooms. It has also inspired two movie adaptations -- the latest of which opens this week -- and one filmed sequel.

By early January, all the paperwork on the mass reading will have been turned in, processed and forwarded to the Guinness World Records for certification, according to Eileen Hughes, director of education initiatives for Boston-based Walden Media, one of the latest movie's producers and the organizer of the record-breaking effort. Only then will the schools know for sure whether they really broke the record.

At Fallon Park, it seemed that the emphasis was less on breaking a record than on reveling in everything remotely related to the book. Students have been studying the book and have decorated the school with drawings of farm animals.

On Tuesday, they wore animal masks made from colored paper or paper plates in the school's gym as they read the passage.

Their teachers and principal, in flannel shirts and straw hats, did their best to evoke the farmer, Mr. Arable.

A few hay bales had been placed in the gym to add to the atmosphere.

"I'm very excited," said Meredith Adams, the Fallon Park teacher who organized the event. "It was short and sweet but it took a lot to get together."

Shortly after noon, the reading was finished and the students started lining up to go back to class. The improvised barn they had created for the occasion became an elementary school gymnasium again.

A custodian turned to Adams and asked: "Where should I put the hay?"