Huckleberry Finn had a tough life with his drunk father until an adventure with Tom Sawyer changed everything. But when Huck's dad returns and kidnaps him, he must escape down the Mississippi river with runaway slave, Jim. They encounter trouble at every turn, from floods and gunfights to armed bandits and the long arm of the law. Through it all the friends stick together - but can Huck and Tom free Jim from slavery once and for all? With an inspirational introduction by Darren Shan, "The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn" is one of the twelve wonderful classic stories being relaunched in "Puffin Classics" in March 2008.

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Summary: ADVENTURES OF HUCKLEBERRY FINN by Mark Twain
Comment: Adventures of Huckleberry Finn is a novel by Mark Twain, originally published in 1884. It is the sequel to The Adventures of Tom Sawyer. Ernest Hemingway (and many others) called it the greatest American novel ever. Huck Finn picks up right where Tom Sawyer left off - Huck's abusive father appears to lay claim to Huck's fortune, so Huck fakes his own death and goes down the Mississippi River with Jim, the escaped slave.

Much like Tom Sawyer, there's not a lot of plot going on here most of the time, and that's okay, because Twain's writing is extremely entertaining. Twain has a good old time mocking social conventions, and the novel is gripping almost all the way through. Hemingway was right: the end of Huck Finn is poor. After Jim is abducted and Tom Sawyer reappears, things just get silly, not to mention highly convenient (And Tom Sawyer here is just as immature as he ever was, reinforcing that no real maturation occurred in Tom Sawyer, and that that book really isn't a coming-of-age story in the truest sense).

Twain has made Huck the narrator. On the whole, this works, although it gets tiresome to read Huck's dialect sometimes. Twain-as-narrator is definitely missed here. Nobody could write a clever sentence like Twain, and most of that is lost here, although occasionally Huck will turn one (and by doing so break character, but that's the price you pay).

Huck Finn has been exceedingly controversial because of the extensive use of the n-word. So is the novel racist? Certainly the characters have the racism of the day ingrained in them - in that sense, it is racist. But more important to most people is whether Twain was racist; that is, whether he put his own personal racism in the book. That is harder to determine, especially since Twain has made Huck the narrator. Perhaps the fairest thing to say is that Twain was genuinely criticizing racism, but the way in which he portrayed Jim and the other characters contains some residual racism of its own.

So is Huck Finn America's greatest novel? Well, maybe not. But it's definitely up there.

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Summary: Mark Twain's Classic, if Problematic, Adventure Tale
Comment: My daughter's fourth-grade reading teacher urged that parents continue the practice of reading to their children, and specifically recommended ADVENTURES OF HUCKLEBERRY FINN. It had been some 35-40 years since I had read the work myself, and so I relished the opportunity to read it again with my daughter.

For those who have just arrived from another planet, HUCK FINN is 19th-century humor writer Mark Twain's episodic adventure tale about a good-hearted young rustic named Huckleberry Finn, who boldly and ingeniously escapes the abusive treatment of his father and sets off on a raft down the Mississippi River. Almost immediately, he is joined by a runaway slave of his previous acquaintance named Jim. The greater part of this lengthy novel consists of the various adventures they experience on the River, including an encounter with thieves aboard a sinking steamship, an escape from a bloody family feud, and, most prominently, various scrapes in the company of a couple of ne'er-do-wells who wish to be treated by Jim and Huck as the Duke of Bridgewater and the King of England. The novel is written as a sequel of sorts to THE ADVENTURES OF TOM SAWYER, but can be read independently of it.

Two things stood out for me in reading HUCK FINN aloud. Let me start with the second: reading this story aloud really helps one appreciate the dialects that Mark Twain captures in the novel. Certainly, Jim's dialect is different from Huck's, but with careful attention to the language one will also notice the distinctive dialects of the other prominent characters such as the Duke and King. The first thing that stood out for me is how uncomfortable I was reading a literary work--even a classic such as this one--that liberally uses the "N" word and heaps other abuse on African Americans.

This is one reason the book is banned by many libraries. In reading HUCK FINN with my daughter, however, I found that the story could be both a literary experience and a teaching tool. We could and did discuss the terrible power of words to hurt people, as well as the treatment of slaves in 19th-century America. Also, over the course of the novel, Huck Finn comes to see the humanity in Jim and sees him as a friend. Still, the novel doesn't entirely justify itself on those grounds, particularly after the humiliating treatment Jim experiences in the final chapters. Moreover, one might argue that, at least in parts of the story, Jim comes off as a racial caricature.

Thus the novel does pose a challenge to the reflective and concerned parent. HUCK FINN is no doubt a masterpiece of fiction. It is, moreover, a humorous and sometimes moving adventure story (albeit one that moves at a deliberate pace compared to 21st-century YA fiction). Nonetheless, with respect to the racism that is pervasive in the novel, in reading this story to children one should be prepared to talk about its underlying social problems in the light of American history and contemporary mores.

My daughter and I read this edition (Puffin Classics). It is a conveniently sized book that does not stint on font size to create a small format paperback. It would not be the edition I would choose permanently to grace one's library, but it is an excellent choice for children.

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