Mark Twain created a related character for young boys everywhere when he wrote The Adventures of Tom Sawyer in 1876.
Tom Sawyer is an imaginative and mischievous boy who lives near the Mississippi River in the 1840s. He plays hooky and gets into fights, his punishment to whitewash a fence. The whitewash scene is usually a child’s first introduction to the word gullible.
Tom has a crush on Becky Thatcher and becomes engaged to her simply through a kiss, however the relationship ends when she discovers he was previously engaged. One of Tom’s friends is Huckleberry Finn and together they have their own adventures, including sneaking into graveyards to try out a cure for warts with a dead cat. However this leads to seeing a murder and an innocent man being held for the crime.
Guilt fills Tom and Huck and even though they are scared out of their wits of the real killer, they remain quiet until the trail. However this is after they boys fake their deaths until Tom’s sees his family’s pain.
The Adventures of Tom Sawyer was followed by The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn (1884).
The Adventures of Tom Sawyer is the first book in Children’s Classics month.
The Adventures of Tom Sawyer can be found in your local library, the website for the Bergen County Cooperative Library System can be found here or at your local Barnes and Noble in Hackensack.
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