The Adventures of Tom Sawyer

by Mark Twain

Overview

Mischief is Tom Sawyer's middle name. There is nothing he likes better than playing hookey from school, messing about on the Mississippi with his best friend, the hobo Huckleberry Finn, or wooing the elusive beauty Becky Thatcher. Lazy and reckless, he is a menace to his Aunt Polly - 'Tom, I've a notion to skin you alive' - an embarrassment to his teachers and the envy of his peers. But there is method in his badness. He exhibits all the cunning of a magpie when hatching an elaborate scheme to avoid whitewashing a fence, and an adventure downriver with Huck and Joe Harper plunges the little town of St Petersburg into such an outpouring of grief that Tom is spared the belt on his return. But the innocent adventures end suddenly when Tom and Huck witness a murder in the graveyard. Should they tell of what they saw under the moonlight, when Injun Joe slipped the bloodstained knife into the hands of Muff Potter? Or should they 'keep mum' and risk letting an innocent man go to the gallows?

'Most of the adventures recorded in this book really occurred; one or two were experiences of my own, the rest of those boys who were schoolmates of mine', Mark Twain wrote in the preface to the original 1876 edition. Inspired by his upbringing in a small township on the Mississippi, and written 'to remind adults of what they once were themselves, and of how they felt and thought and talked, and what queer enterprises they sometimes engaged in', Twain's hymn to childhood and the great outdoors remains a classic account of boys on the loose in frontier-era America.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9780425289037
Publisher:	Penguin Young Readers Group
Publication date:	06/06/2017
Series:	Puffin + Pantone
Edition description:	Reprint
Pages:	352
Product dimensions:	5.10(w) x 7.00(h) x 1.10(d)
Age Range:	8 - 12 Years

About the Author

Mark Twain is the pseudonym of Samuel Langhorne Clemens (1835-1910). He was born in Missouri, USA. He travelled around America, seeking fame and fortune before becoming a successful journalist and travel writer. In 1876 The Adventures of Tom Sawyer, inspired by his own childhood, was published, followed eight years later by The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn.

Date of Birth:

November 30, 1835

Date of Death:

April 21, 1910

Place of Birth:

Florida, Missouri

Place of Death:

Redding, Connecticut

Read an Excerpt

Chapter 1
(Continues…)

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Excerpted from "The Adventures of Tom Sawyer"
by .
Copyright © 2017 Mark Twain.
Excerpted by permission of Penguin Young Readers Group.
All rights reserved. No part of this excerpt may be reproduced or reprinted without permission in writing from the publisher.
Excerpts are provided by Dial-A-Book Inc. solely for the personal use of visitors to this web site.

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Table of Contents

Contents
Introduction

1. Tom Plays, Fights, and Hides
2. The Glorious Whitewasher
3. Busy at War and Love
4. Showing Off in Sunday School
5. The Pinch Bug and His Prey
6. Tom Meets Becky
7. Tick-Running and a Heartbreak
8. A Pirate Bold to Be
9. Tragedy in the Graveyard
10. Dire Prophecy of the Howling Dog
11. Conscience Racks Tom
12. The Cat and the Painkiller
13. The Pirate Crew Set Sail
14. Happy Camp of the Freebooters
15. Tom's Stealthy Visit Home
16. First Pipes — "I've Lost My Knife"
17. Pirates at Their Own Funeral
18. Tom Reveals His Dream Secret
19. The Cruelty of "I Didn't Think"
20. Tom Takes Becky's Punishment
21. Eloquence — and the Master's Gilded Dome
22. Huck Finn Quotes Scripture
23. The Salvation of Muff Potter
24. Splendid Days and Fearsome Nights
25. Seeking the Buried Treasure
26. Real Robbers Seize the Box of Gold
27. Trembling on the Trail
28. In the Lair of Injun Joe
29. Huck Saves the Widow
30. Tom and Becky in the Cave
31. Found and Lost Again
32. "Turn Out! They're Found!"
33. The Fate of Injun Joe
34. Floods of Gold
35. Respectable Huck Joins the Gang
    Literary Allusions and Notes
    Critical Excerpts
    Mark Twain on The Adventures of Tom Sawyer
    Suggestions for Further Reading

What People are Saying About This

From the Publisher

"Twain had a greater effect than any other writer on the evolution of American prose."

Reading Group Guide

1. In his preface, Mark Twain remarks that "Although my book is intended mainly for the entertainment of boys and girls, I hope it will not be shunned by men and women on that account, for part of my plan has been to try to pleasantly remind adults of what they once were themselves. . . ." Do you think Twain succeeds in this "plan"? Discuss the ways in which Tom Sawyer can be read by both children and adults-do different aspects of the book appeal to different kinds of readers? Are different episodes designed, as some critics have suggested, to appeal to different audiences?

2. How does Tom Sawyer relate to the world of adult authority and responsibility? Can he be said to "mature" during the course of the novel, as critics have asserted? If so in what ways?

3. Discuss the town of St. Petersburg, Mississippi, Tom Sawyer's home. How would you describe it? What literary devices or descriptions, to your mind, make Twain's portrayal of rural American life in the years before the Civil War interesting, unique, appealing?

4. Virginia Wexman notes that in Tom Sawyer "we are confronted with two clearly separate worlds. The first world is a light and engaging one . . . where life is played at . . . the world of Tom himself. . . . But there is another world here too, a darker world where actions have real meaning and real moral consequences-the world of people like Injun Joe and Muff Potter." Discuss each of these "two worlds, " and the ways in which they are related to each other in the novel.

5. Discuss Tom's relationship with Huckleberry Finn, from their first encounter, through their subsequentadventures. What do you make of this friendship? Why are these characters drawn to each other? Compare this relationship with other relationships in the novel, for instance Tom's relationship to Becky Thatcher.

6. Discuss Twain's use of particular geographical settings as scenes for episodes in the novel: the river, the island, the cave. Why do you think these particular landscapes are chosen? How do they inform the action of the novel?

7. Tom Sawyer is one of the most recognizable and revered characters in American literature; as Lyall Powers writes, "Everybody knows Tom's story whether he has actually read the book or not." What do you think accounts for the enduring popularity of Twain's literary creation?

Editorial Reviews

A sacred text within the body of American literature.”—Frank Conroy

From the Publisher

Over nearly sixty years, this reviewer has come across myriad film, TV, stage, and dumbed-down print versions of this classic paean to childhood. Nonetheless, listening to this reading, I am struck by how fresh, how clever, how true it sounds. As narrator, Patrick Fraley has many virtues: a gift for voices and dialect, incredible and seemingly inexhaustible energy, an obvious and infectious delight in his material. He is too broad, too cartoony, too manic to represent the author’s tone satisfactorily. But he is never dull. Y.R. © AudioFile 2002, Portland, Maine

APR/MAY 02 - AudioFile