Meanwhile, Tom just wants to cut school, flirt with the new girl, get rich, and read what he pleases. All the grown-ups in the book fret about Tom, fussing at him about his clothes and his manners, but also about his future, and whether this orphaned boy can ever grow up right. It begins with several chapters of scene-setting episodic skylarking by Tom and his gang. The book sold slowly at first but has since become the archetypal comic novel of American childhood. Most readers pick it up young and enjoy it, but too few come back to it later on, when its dark shadings and affectionate satire of small-town life might hit closer to home. Mark Twain's The Adventures of Tom Sawyer (1876) is a book for readers of all ages.
Neither American literature nor America has ever been the same. In a still puritanical nation, Twain reminded adults that children were not angels, but fellow human beings, and perhaps all the more lovable for their imperfections and bad grooming. Mark Twain created two fictional boys, Tom Sawyer and Huck Finn, who still seem more real than most of the people we know.
More than any other work in our culture, it established America's vision of childhood. The Adventures of Tom Sawyer is not merely a literary classic.
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