Tom Sawyer Abroad (1894)

Tom Sawyer and Huck Finn fail to go Around the world In Eighty Days.

http://www.gutenberg.org/etext/91

http://freesf.strandedinoz.com/wordpress/2012/05/tom-sawyer-abroad-mark-twain/ ( )

To sum it all into one phrase, "Where did that come from?" ( )

This is the Tom Sawyer book people have not heard of. With good reason!

Tom Sawyer is a wonderful story of life in the 19th Century deep south of America, with an engaging protaganist.

Huck Finn is a classic of American literature, taking the setting of Tom Sawyer, adding a raft trip and plenty of issues over slavery, justice and other such wieghty matter in an engaging story.

Tom Sawyer abroad takes those characters, sticks them in a balloon with Jim, the freed slave, sends them on an unbelievable journey across the world, and for me breaks the spell. Books create a kind of contract with the reader. Huck Finn says "believe in me - this is how it was". Tom Sawyer abroad breaks that contract.

On the other hand, if it were a standalone book with different characters it would be a good "boy's own adventure" I think.

There were some good points though. Mark Twain has a trademark humour, which still shines through in this work. Poor Huck Finn keeps complaining about the map being a liar because states are not the colour they are shown on the map, and lines of longitude cannot actually be found on the earth!

And there is more of the philosophy wrapped in an engagingly young understanding of the world in, for instance, the discussion of the Holy Land.

Whether the book is worth reading or not is hard to say. It is still a book with merit - it just messes up the Tom Sawyer canon a little, sadly. ( )

My review can be found here: http://endami.blogspot.com/2008/06/tom-sawyer-abroad.html ( )