THE ADVENTURES OF TOM SAWYER(汤姆索亚历险记)

Book Description
Here is the story of Tom, Huck, Becky, and Aunt Polly; a tale of adventures, pranks, playing hookey, and summertime fun. Written by the author sometimes called "the Lincoln of literature," The Adventures of Tom Sawyer was surprisingly neither a critical nor a financial success when it was first published in 1876. It was Mark Twain's first novel. However, since then Tom Sawyer has become his most popular work, enjoying dramatic, film, and even Broadway musical interpretations.

From School Library Journal
Grade 5 Up-British actor Mike McShane provides a superb portrayal of Mark Twain's classic characters, nailing the Mississippi drawl and cadence. For those who know and love the story or are following along with an unabridged edition, however, this production is marred somewhat by what the publisher has chosen to leave out. The more descriptive chapters are shortened or expurgated entirely, which is understandable in the interest of editing for time. Some of the more distasteful racial epithets are gone as well, although Injun Joe retains his moniker. Sid and Mary are also cut entirely, as well as references to smoking, slavery, most of Tom's ludicrously funny romantic notions about the violence inflicted by pirates and robbers, and even the naked figure in the schoolmaster's anatomy book. The result is a watered down Tom and, especially, Huck. The ending also lacks the satisfaction of the original version. The party scene where the fortune is revealed has been cut as has Twain's concluding paragraphs which "endeth this chronicle." It lacks even the closure of the customary, "You have been listening to-." The sturdy plastic case will survive many circulations. If your facility serves an elementary-age population for which the language of the original would not be appropriate, or there is a teacher looking for a sanitized version, McShane's excellent performance makes this edition worth recommending.
　　　　　　　　　　　　　　　　　　　　　　　　　　　　　Diana Dickerson, White Pigeon Community Schools, MI

From Library Journal
Huckleberry Finn may be the greater book, but Tom Sawyer has always been more widely read. Moreover, it is a book that can be enjoyed equally by both children and adults. Twain, who called it a "hymn" to boyhood, would be thrilled that in narrator Patrick Fraley his hymn has found its most passionate voice. Many good unabridged readings of Tom Sawyer have already been recorded, but most are simply that: readings. Fraley's performance is something more; in attempting to bring each character to life, his enthusiasm for the material is so palpable that the mere sound of his voice commands attention. A can't-miss addition to all libraries, including those that have other Tom Sawyer programs.
　　　　　　　　　　　　　　　　　　　　　　　　　　　　　 Kent Rasmussen, Thousand Oaks, CA

From Parents' Choice?
A captivating version of Mark Twain's classic yarn about an orphan growing up on the Mississippi. The narrator's voice resembles Twain's; he uses Twain's language. The reader for Tom does an exceptional job. A few of the minor characters sound forced, but don't ruin the performance. For all ages. A 1999 Parents' Choice? Recommendation. (Parents' Choice?)

From AudioFile
[Editor's Note: The following is a combined review with THE ADVENTURES OF HUCKLEBERRY FINN.]--Recorded over a decade ago, these volumes suffer from a few bad edits and sound quality inferior to today's standards. Tim Behrens does a spirited job performing both, fully voicing the characters and keeping his touch light. But he adds an inappropriately mincing quality to the children and women he impersonates and emphasizes the low humor. These are definitely not the most profound interpretations of these classics but are amusing enough for the casual listener. Y.R.

The Merriam-Webster Encyclopedia of Literature
(in full The Adventures of Tom Sawyer) Novel by Mark Twain, published in 1876. Tom Sawyer, an enduring narrative of youthful escapades, is perhaps Twain's best book for a juvenile audience. The setting is a small Mississippi River town in the 1830s, and the characters are the grownups and the children of the town. The book's nostalgic attitude and its wistful re-creation of pre-Civil War life are humorously spiced by its main character, Tom Sawyer. Rather than the preternaturally "model boy" of Sunday-school stories, Tom is mischievous and irresponsible but goodhearted. Although Thomas Bailey Aldrich's Story of a Bad Boy was published seven years before it, Tom Sawyer and Huckleberry Finn changed the course of American writing and gave the first deeply felt vision of boyhood in juvenile literature.

About the Author
Mark Twain was born Samuel Langhorne Clemens on November 30, 1835, in Florida, Missouri; his family moved to the port town of Hannibal four years later. His father, an unsuccessful farmer, died when Twain was eleven. Soon afterward the boy began working as an apprentice printer, and by age sixteen he was writing newspaper sketches. He left Hannibal at eighteen to work as an itinerant printer in New York, Philadelphia, St. Louis, and Cincinnati. From 1857 to 1861 he worked on Mississippi steamboats, advancing from cub pilot to licensed pilot.

After river shipping was interrupted by the Civil War, Twain headed west with his brother Orion, who had been appointed secretary to the Nevada Territory. Settling in Carson City, he tried his luck at prospecting and wrote humorous pieces for a range of newspapers. Around this time he first began using the pseudonym Mark Twain, derived from a riverboat term. Relocating to San Francisco, he became a regular newspaper correspondent and a contributor to the literary magazine the Golden Era. He made a five-month journey to Hawaii in 1866 and the following year traveled to Europe to report on the first organized tourist cruise. The Celebrated Jumping Frog of Calaveras County and Other Sketches (1867) consolidated his growing reputation as humorist and lecturer.

After his marriage to Livy Langdon, Twain settled first in Buffalo, New York, and then for two decades in Hartfort, Connecticut. His European sketches were expanded into The Innocents Abroad (1869), followed by Roughing It (1872), an account of his Western adventures; both were enormously successful. Twain's literary triumphs were offset by often ill-advised business dealings (he sank thousands of dollars, for instance, in a failed attempt to develop a new kind of typesetting machine, and thousands more into his own ultimately unsuccessful publishing house) and unrestrained spending that left him in frequent financial difficulty, a pattern that was to persist throughout his life.

Following The Gilded Age (1873), written in collaboration with Charles Dudley Warner, Twain began a literary exploration of his childhood memories of the Mississippi, resulting in a trio of masterpieces--The Adventures of Tom Sawyer (1876), Life on the Mississippi (1883), and finally The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn (1885), on which he had been working for nearly a decade. Another vein, of historical romance, found expression in The Prince and the Pauper (1882), the satirical A Connecticut Yankee in King Arthur's Court (1889), and Personal Recollections of Joan of Arc (1896), while he continued to draw on his travel experiences in A Tramp Abroad (1880) and Following the Equator (1897). His close associates in these years included William Dean Howells, Bret Harte, and George Washington Cable, as well as the dying Ulysses S. Grant, whom Twain encouraged to complete his memoirs, published by Twain's publishing company in 1885.

For most of the 1890s Twain lived in Europe, as his life took a darker……

From School Library Journal
Grade 5 Up-British actor Mike McShane provides a superb portrayal of Mark Twain's classic characters, nailing the Mississippi drawl and cadence. For those who know and love the story or are following along with an unabridged edition, however, this production is marred somewhat by what the publisher has chosen to leave out. The more descriptive chapters are shortened or expurgated entirely, which is understandable in the interest of editing for time. Some of the more distasteful racial epithets are gone as well, although Injun Joe retains his moniker. Sid and Mary are also cut entirely, as well as references to smoking, slavery, most of Tom's ludicrously funny romantic notions about the violence inflicted by pirates and robbers, and even the naked figure in the schoolmaster's anatomy book. The result is a watered down Tom and, especially, Huck. The ending also lacks the satisfaction of the original version. The party scene where the fortune is revealed has been cut as has Twain's concluding paragraphs which "endeth this chronicle." It lacks even the closure of the customary, "You have been listening to-." The sturdy plastic case will survive many circulations. If your facility serves an elementary-age population for which the language of the original would not be appropriate, or there is a teacher looking for a sanitized version, McShane's excellent performance makes this edition worth recommending.
Diana Dickerson, White Pigeon Community Schools, MI
Copyright 2000 Reed Business Information, Inc. --This text refers to the Audio Cassette edition.

From Library Journal
Huckleberry Finn may be the greater book, but Tom Sawyer has always been more widely read. Moreover, it is a book that can be enjoyed equally by both children and adults. Twain, who called it a "hymn" to boyhood, would be thrilled that in narrator Patrick Fraley his hymn has found its most passionate voice. Many good unabridged readings of Tom Sawyer have already been recorded, but most are simply that: readings. Fraley's performance is something more; in attempting to bring each character to life, his enthusiasm for the material is so palpable that the mere sound of his voice commands attention. A can't-miss addition to all libraries, including those that have other Tom Sawyer programs. Kent Rasmussen, Thousand Oaks, CA
Copyright 2002 Reed Business Information, Inc. --This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.

From Parents' Choice®
A captivating version of Mark Twain's classic yarn about an orphan growing up on the Mississippi. The narrator's voice resembles Twain's; he uses Twain's language. The reader for Tom does an exceptional job. A few of the minor characters sound forced, but don't ruin the performance. For all ages. A 1999 Parents' Choice® Recommendation. (Parents' Choice®) --This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.

From AudioFile
[Editor's Note: The following is a combined review with THE ADVENTURES OF HUCKLEBERRY FINN.]--Recorded over a decade ago, these volumes suffer from a few bad edits and sound quality inferior to today's standards. Tim Behrens does a spirited job performing both, fully voicing the characters and keeping his touch light. But he adds an inappropriately mincing quality to the children and women he impersonates and emphasizes the low humor. These are definitely not the most profound interpretations of these classics but are amusing enough for the casual listener. Y.R. © AudioFile 2002, Portland, Maine-- Copyright © AudioFile, Portland, Maine --This text refers to the Audio Cassette edition.

AudioFile Magazine April/May 2002
"Fraley has many virtues: a gift for voices and dialect, incredible energy, an obvious and infectious delight in his material." --This text refers to the Audio Cassette edition.

Billboard, 12/01/95
"The humor and high-spirited adventure of Mark Twain’s classic are here in full in this exuberant performance." --This text refers to the Audio Cassette edition.

Billboard, 12/01/95
"This is that rare audiobook that can truly be enjoyed by all ages." --This text refers to the Audio Cassette edition.

KLIATT, May 1996
"Show me a finer recording, and I reckon I’ll eat it, by Jimminy!" --This text refers to the Audio Cassette edition.

VOYA, February 2004
"His clear, distinct, resolute voice is filled with a liveliness... in a reading to be enjoyed by all ages." --This text refers to the Audio Cassette edition.

Billboard, Dec. 1, 1995
"The humor and high-spirited adventure of Mark Twain's classic are here in full in this exuberant performance. Fraley, a veteran voice-over actor who has provided voices for thousands of cartoons, radio shows, and commercials, tells the story in a lively country twang and energetically acts out all the parts, offering a veritable one-man show. Especially entertaining are the scenes in which Tom wheedles his way our to trouble wit his aunt, tries to charm Becky Thatcher, or gets into a heated argument with a schoolmateFraley effortlessly switches back and forth between voices, throwing himself into each part with gusto. This is that rare audiobook that can truly be enjoyed by all ages." --This text refers to the Audio Cassette edition.

Review
"Twain had a greater effect than any other writer on the evolution of American prose." --This text refers to the Paperback edition.

Mark Twain was born Samuel Langhorne Clemens in Florida, Missouri. Following careers as a printer, Mississippi riverboat pilot, and a brief stint in the Confederate militia, Twain wrote such American classics as The Adventures of Tom Sawyer, The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn and A Connecticut Yankee in King Arthur's Court.

--This text refers to the Hardcover edition.