The Adventures of Tom Sawyer, Complete.

Fence-painting has never sounded so appealing as when Tom Sawyer talks his friends into doing it for him and paying for the privilege. Mark Twain's The Adventures of Tom Sawyer is one of the best-loved books in American literature, a comedy of boyhood shot through with real danger and real feeling.

What it's about

In the sleepy town of St. Petersburg on the banks of the Mississippi, young Tom Sawyer lives by his wits, dodging chores, wooing Becky Thatcher, and dreaming of glory. What begins as a string of boyish escapades, superstition, hooky and playacting at pirates, darkens when Tom and his friend Huckleberry Finn witness something they were never meant to see in a midnight graveyard. From there the story gathers real stakes: a wronged man, a dangerous villain, a lost cave, and buried treasure. Twain balances laughter and peril with perfect ease.

Themes

Childhood and its passage toward conscience sit at the heart of the book. Twain celebrates the freedom and imagination of boyhood while quietly tracing Tom's growth toward courage and moral choice. Along the way he satirises the pieties of small-town respectability, the church, the school, the whole adult world seen through a mischievous child's eyes.

Why it still matters

Tom Sawyer helped invent the American myth of boyhood, and its influence runs everywhere in the fiction that followed. But it endures because it is simply wonderful: funny, suspenseful, warm, and truer about how children think than almost anything written since. It also opens the door to Twain's darker, greater sequel about Huck Finn.

Who it's for

Readers of every age, from children meeting Tom for the first time to adults returning to a favourite. Anyone who loves adventure, humour and the lost world of a river town summer will find it irresistible.