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Narrated by LibriVox Community
Mark Twain— 6 hours, 46 minutes
Narrated by LibriVox Community
Mark Twain— 6 hours, 46 minutes
"Twain had a greater effect than any other writer on the evolution of American prose."
02/01/2016
Gr 4–8—Tom, Becky, Aunt Polly, and the other residents of St. Petersburg, MO, come to vivid life through Payne's exuberant artwork in this handsome reprint edition of the classic story. Finely detailed pencil drawings, stunning watercolors, and mixed-media compositions depict playful, Norman Rockwell-esque portraits, Americana, and thoughtful visualizations of Twain's iconic scenes. A work of art, this oversize edition is a lovely addition for collectors and libraries with large classics collections.—Kiera Parrott, School Library Journal
02/01/2014
Gr 7 Up—Two American classics transport listeners to Twain's Missouri with the mischievous antics of Tom Sawyer and the less savory, but equally appealing, jaunts of Huckleberry Finn. With characters drawn from his hometown, Twain's tales reveal the 19th-century culture, yet remain current. The boys' conquests range from Tom saving himself and his delicate sweetheart from a deep cave to Huck rafting down the Mississippi with a runaway slave and two con men. While far from perfect, the titular teens are never mean-spirited, and their misbehavior is often humorous. Narrator Eric G. Dove takes on roles from sweet, young Becky Thatcher to mean Injun Joe with clear dialect and country accents. This high-quality sound recording is a natural way to introduce Twain to students with one caution: the N-word, common in that era, is found in both novels. These recordings are useful additions to middle and high school libraries and solid components in any public library collection.—Barbara Wysocki, Cora J. Belden Library, Rocky Hill, CT
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
| BN ID: | 2940170309368 |
|---|---|
| Publisher: | LibriVox |
| Publication date: | 08/25/2014 |
| Sales rank: | 232,376 |
| Age Range: | 8 - 11 Years |
"TOM!"
No answer.
"Tom!"
No answer.
"What's gone with that boy, I wonder? You TOM!"
No answer.
The old lady puffed her spectacles down and looked over them and about the room; then she put them up and looked out under them. She seldom or never looked through them for so small a thing as a boy; they were her state pair, the pride of her heart, and were built for "style," not service-she could have seen through a pair of stovelids just as well. She looked perplexed for a moment, and then said, not fiercely, but still loud enough for the furniture to hear:
"Well, I lay if I get hold of you I'll--"
She did not finish, for by this time she was bending down and punching under the bed with the broom, and so she needed breath to punctuate the punches with. She resurrected nothing but the cat.
"I never did see the beat of that boy!"
She went to the open door and stood in it and looked out among the tomato vines and "jimpson" weeds that constituted the garden. No Tom. So she lifted up her voice at an angle calculated for distance and shouted:
"Y-o-u-u Tom!"
There was a slight noise behind her and she turned just in time to seize a small boy by the slack of his roundabout and arrest his flight.
"There! I might 'a' thought of that closet. What you been doing in there?"
"Nothing."
"Nothing! Look at your hands. And look at your mouth. What is that truck?"
"I don't know, aunt."
"Well, I know. It's jam-that's what it is. Forty times I've said if you didn't let that jam alone I'd skin you. Hand me that switch."
The switch hovered in theair-the peril was desperate
"My! Look behind you, aunt!"
The old lady whirled round, and snatched her skirts out of danger, The lad fled on the instant, scrambled up the high board fence, and disappeared over it.
His aunt Polly stood surprised a moment, and then broke into a gentle laugh.
"Hang the boy, can't I never learn anything? Ain't he played me tricks enough like that for me to be looking out for him by this time? But old fools is the biggest fools there is. Can't learn an old dog new tricks, as the saying is, But my goodness, he never plays them alike, two days, and how is a body to know what's coming? He 'pears to know just how long he can torment me before I get my dander up, and he knows if he can make out to put me off for a minute or make me laugh, it's A down again and I can't hit him a tick. I ain't doing my duty by that boy, and that's the Lord's truth, goodness knows, Spare the rod and spile the child, as the Good Book says. I'm a laying up sin and suffering for us both, I know. He's full of the Old Scratch, but laws-a-me! he's my own dead sister's boy, poor thing, and I ain't got the heart to lash him, somehow. Every time I let him off, my conscience does hurt me so, and every time I hit him my old heart breaks. Well-a-well, man that is born of woman is of few days and full of trouble, as the Scripture says, and I reckon it's so. He'll play hockey this evening,* and I'll just be obleeged to make him work, to-morrow, to punish him, It's mighty hard to make him work Saturdays, when all the boys is having holiday, but he hates work more than he hates anything else, and Ive got to do some of my duty by him, or I'll be the ruination of the child."
Tom did play hookey, and he had a very good time. He got back home barely in season to help Jim, the small colored boy, saw next-day's wood and split the kindlings before supper-at least he was there in time to tell his adventures to Jim while Jim did three-fourths of the work. Torn's younger brother (or rather half-brother) Sid was already through with his part of the work (picking up chips), for he was a quiet boy, and he had no adventurous, troublesome ways.
While Tom was eating his supper, and stealing sugar as opportunity offered, Aunt Polly asked him questions that were full of guile, and very deep-for she wanted to trap him into damaging revealments. Like many other simple-hearted souls, it was her pet vanity to believe she was endowed with a talent for dark and mysterious diplomacy, and she loved to contemplate her most transparent devices as marvels of tow cunning. Said she:
"Tom, it was middling warm in school, warn't it?"
"Yes'm."
"Powerful warm, warn't it?"
"Yes,m."
"Didn't you want to go in a-swimming, Tom?"
A bit of a scare shot through Tom--a touch of uncomfortable suspicion. He searched Aunt Polly's face, but it told him nothing. So he said:
"No'm--well, not very much."
The old lady reached out her hand and felt Tom's shirt, and said:
"But you ain't too warm now, though." And it flattered her to reflect that she had discovered that the shirt was dry without anybody knowing that that was what she had in her mind. But in spite of tier, Tom knew where the wind lay, now. So he forestalled what might be the next move:
"Some of us pumped on our hcads--mine's damp yet. Sec?"
Aunt Polly was vexed to think she had overlooked that bit of circumstantial evidence, and missed a trickThen she had a new inspiration:
Lovable heroes and heroines abound in children’s literature, but let’s be honest: many of them have blind spots, and they rarely act alone. More often than not, there’s a dry wit beneath their wings, and it typically belongs to an endearing sidekick who makes up for reduced beauty and grace with humor and hard work. […]
