This unabridged recording includes every word of the original, and has not been "dumbed down" nor edited in any way, thus it may not be in all ways politically correct. If you are looking for an less challenging, less realistic rewriting of this great American classic, we recommend any of the available sanitized retellings of Mark Twain's novel. For, while it is well known as a "children's book," The Adventures of Tom Sawyer is rich in eloquent, sophisticated, and even sometimes crude language. There is a murder, a hidden treasure, and even death by starvation.

Add to this a love story, a buddy story, and a family drama--all presented with a fidelity to circumstance which loses no charm by being realistic in the highest degree, and which gives incomparably the best picture of life in that region as yet known to fiction, as William Dean Howells wrote in his review of Tom Sawyer, in Harper's Magazine in 1876. Happily, Mr. Howells never lived to see this masterpiece "retold" for children.