The Adventures of Tom Sawyer – oh, to be a precocious boy

The Adventures of Tom SawyerThe Adventures of Tom Sawyer by Mark Twain

My rating: 4 of 5 stars

After reading a children’s version of Huck Finn and it going over well with my boys, I decided to just go for it, the original.

Maybe Mark Twain’s prose would be too difficult, I thought, but, then again, as I read aloud to them, I frequently add information and answer questions. I also figured we could stop if it wasn’t going well.

So I started…I found that I had to skip a few of the longer actionless passages of such beautiful and witty prose that Twain wrote. They were over the boys’ head. But that was just here and there.

For most part, the book is fantastic and interesting. They were captivated. We developed a vocabulary. I got to explain the country to my city boys.

They wouldn’t let me use the N-word, but they knew when it was used in the book. I switched it to negro and explained to them all about it.

It was also great that I found this on Gutenberg.org. I read it on my phone. That allowed me to turn out the lights in the room.

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