In this paper we review the progress of the shell-model approach to understanding the properties of light exotic nuclei (A < 40). By shell-model'' we mean the consistent and large-scale application of the classic methods discussed, for example, in the book of de-Shalit and Talmi. Modern calculations incorporate as many of the important configurations as possible and make use of realistic effective interactions for the valence nucleons. Properties such as the nuclear densities depend on the mean-field potential, which is usually separately from the valence interaction. We will discuss results for radii which are based on a standard Hartree-Fock approach with Skyrme-type interactions
