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Title: The Adventures of Tom Sawyer (Oxford World's Classics) by Mark Twain, Lee Clark Mitchell ISBN: 0-19-283389-8 Publisher: Oxford University Press Pub. Date: 01 April, 1998 Format: Paperback Volumes: 1 List Price(USD): $5.95 |
Average Customer Rating: 4.19 (231 reviews)
Rating: 4
Summary: The Adventures of Tom Sawyer
Comment: The Adventures of Tom Sawyer, by Mark Twain, is a very tricky book. It portrays the image of a child's novel, when in fact it is an equally great read for adults. Yes, it is a story of childhood, but it inspires adventure for the young, and revives it for the old. Something that everyone needs to do.
Murder. It's a serious thing no matter what age you are. Tom Sawyer and Huckleberry Finn both knew this when they witnessed the homicide of Dr. Robinson while they were attempting to rid themselves of warts at the town graveyard. Injun Joe committed the murder, but he took advantage of Muff Potter's drunkenness and Muff gets blamed for the crime. Tom and Huck decide to swear by an oath of blood that they will never tell a soul, but when it finally comes down to it, Tom breaks the oath in order to testify that Muff is innocent and that Injun Joe was the real culprit.
Unfortunately, Joe escapes from the courthouse in the nick of time and Tom and Huck begin to fear for their lives. In this fright, they run away for quite a long time, and the townsfolk start believing that they're dead. One night, Tom sneaks back to his house. As he's peaking through the window, and finds his Aunt Polly weeping over him with sorrow. He realizes that he should come back home, and he happens to return on the day of his funeral, surprising everyone. Now that he's become the envy of the town, his former love, Becky Thatcher, takes a liking to him again, and they get lost in a cave together. While the two children's families' search for them, Tom and Becky stumble across Injun Joe hiding out in the cave. With a lot of luck, they make it out of the cave as fast as they can, escaping Injun Joe once again. The town closes the cave up when they find out that Joe is stashing himself inside and he dies of starvation.
Mark Twain disguised this book as a simple story, but its crafty slang and emotionally stirring power tells me otherwise. Reading about a serious, horrific event such as murder, through the eyes of a young trouble-making boy, is a perspective that will bring out the child in everyone, no matter what age they are and no matter what they're expecting the book to be like.
Rating: 4
Summary: Book Review
Comment: This book, considered one of the classics of American Literature, tells the story of Thomas Sawyer, a mischievous boy who gets in many troubles and adventures together with his friends Huckleberry Finn, Joe Harper, and his beloved girlfriend from school, Becky Thatcher.
Tom lives with his aunt Polly, his sister Mary and his well-behaved younger brother Sid, who always sneaks on him. He is a very playful and imaginative kid, whose games of pirate and Indian sometimes go far beyond the limits of imagination and take a much more real stance.
Mark Twain explores Tom's mind as a child, exposing its dreams and weaknesses, taking the reader back to his childhood memories and making this book a must-read classic for all ages.
Rating: 5
Summary: A return to childhood.
Comment: Although I have always enjoyed Mark Twain's work--his Diary of Adam and Eve is one of my favorites--I've never read Tom Sawyer. Recently I found a small book from the Barnes-Nobel collector's library and decided to read it. That particular issue is probably not the best to use, especially for a first introduction because it is badly edited and exhibits an inordinant number of spelling errors and misplaced words. Certainly for a volume one will use for quotations in any paper one writes a better copy, like the one above, would be more desireable.
Despite his depression in later years, Mark Twain captures the sly sense of humor and dry wit that is a characteristic of American humorous writers: O'Henry and Will Rogers, among them. This is well illlustrated in Tom Sawyer, a novel about being a kid, not just in the 1880s but any time. Twain gets right into the heart and mind of childhood, it's myths, superstitions, trials and victories, even it's great philosophies: "He had discovered a great law of human action, without knowing it, namely, that in order to make a man or a boy covet a thing, it is only necessary to make the thing difficult to attain (p. 25)." (The latter a gloss on the whitewashing of Aunt Polly's fence.)
Truly a Twain and truly a joy.
For THOSE WRITING PAPERS: in English literature. How might Twain stack up against a modern humorist? What types of things make this a "dated" work? Why does that datedness appeal to many readers. How is Tom like modern children? Mark Twain was an adult when he wrote the book. Do you think that that fact makes the story less about a child and how he views the world and more about how an adult remembers being a child? Watch a film about Tom Sawyer. How has Hollywood reworked the story? Does seeing some of Tom's adventures help one enjoy them more? Or does getting "inside his head" through the book make it more enjoyable?
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Title: The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn by Mark Twain, Guy Cardwell, John D. Seelye ISBN: 0142437174 Publisher: Penguin Books Pub. Date: 01 January, 2003 List Price(USD): $6.00 |
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Title: Treasure Island by Robert Louis Stevenson, New American Library Signet ISBN: 0451527046 Publisher: Signet Classics Pub. Date: 01 December, 1998 List Price(USD): $3.95 |
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Title: Adventures of Huckleberry Finn (Dover Thrift Editions) by Mark Twain ISBN: 0486280616 Publisher: Dover Publications Pub. Date: 01 May, 1994 List Price(USD): $2.00 |
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Title: 20,000 Leagues Under the Sea by Jules Verne ISBN: 0812550927 Publisher: Tor Books Pub. Date: 01 October, 1995 List Price(USD): $3.99 |
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Title: The Swiss Family Robinson by Johann David Wyss ISBN: 0440415942 Publisher: Yearling Books Pub. Date: 13 April, 1999 List Price(USD): $4.99 |
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