After all these years of searching online for “great books series for kids,” I’ve never once come across Mark Twain’s series of books about Tom Sawyer, Huckleberry Finn, and their lives along the Missouri River. I can’t believe it! My kids absolutely loved this book and they can’t wait for The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn.

So before I “review” one of the most popular novels of the 19th century, I guess I’ve got a bone to pick with…..the internet. OK, that’s too big an enemy. But seriously, who’s compiling these lists of “great book series for kids”? It’s as if they base their opinions on book-sale numbers instead of content. By the selections I see on some of the lists, it’s also as if some list-makers don’t quite know what “kids” are.

My kids and I have read enough series these past few years to render an opinion, I think, on what makes a good book series for kids. Perhaps it’s up to us to draft a more definitive list. What say you?

I honestly have nothing to say about this book that hasn’t already been written at length by much more educated Twain-iacs than me, but since my kids (9, 11) enjoyed it so much, I do want to share a few things.

First, to reference the elephant in the room: my kids don’t know what “the ‘N’ word” is. Because we listened to this story on audio-book in the Libby app, I couldn’t monitor when the word might creep up on us, and so we heard it several times in this story. Honestly, though, I don’t think my kids ever caught on to it. The accents of the story (and the quality of my car speakers) muddled our listening experience enough that I’m sure those lines flew right over their heads.

Through some of the conversation, actually, it was hard for them to fixate on the details, but overall they caught the drift. Actually, I’d say my kids caught probably 90% of the story, enough to confirm their love for Tom, Huck, and their adventures in the graveyard, town, river, haunted house, cave, etc. On a few occasions, my daughter asked me to pause the story and catch her up on the details, because she missed a key point or two, and I’m glad that I was able to catch everything myself, because some of the voices in the audiobook were truly hard to grasp.

I honestly can’t tell if I would have been more successful reading this story aloud to my kids (as I normally do), or if I’d have gotten muddled up too with the accents Twain had written into the conversations. I recall disliking Rudyard Kipling’s Captains Courageous for this very reason, actually, so perhaps we’ll try to stick with audiobooks for the time being.

All-in-all, this was a fantastic start to a classic series that I wish we had come across earlier. Sure there’s murder and sure the racial epithets of the mid-19th century exist, but with proper handling and honest conversations when needed, this book can be a great introduction to classic children novels…that parents will love just as much. We can’t wait until the next audiobook becomes available.

©2022 E.T.