Twyane, Mark. Adventures of Huckleberry Finn. Tom Sawyer’s Comrade (Orinda CA: Wolfe Press, 2018). 100th Anniversary Collection with original fonts and illustrations. I picked this venerable work randomly, aware that I may not have read it in my younger days and should have, simply because it is held as a classic piece of Americana. I enjoyed the fact that it was printed in its original form, first published in 1884, and so I appreciated the style of English the author employed.
Huckleberry Finn is a story of early America, before the Civil War. It follows the adventures of Huckleberry Finn, a teen age boy, who finds it necessary to abandon his father who treats him in a brutal manner, all this reflective of the wretched conditions of many Americans seeking a livelihood out in the frontier. Moreover, Finn escapes in the company of a child slave who is also looking for a better life and so the two sail down the Missouri River on a raft and eventually reach the Mississippi and still they keep going.
Mark Twayne’s story consists of a series of encounters that the two lads come upon. Their multifaceted conversations, as they sort one experience from another, echo the values that they hold and live by, one white and the other a run-away black. Interestingly, the reader learns that Finn’s views about slavery are ill formed at first and they evolve as the two bond on the basis of their experiences. Huckleberry Finn fully deserves its status as an American classic and hopefully all Americans, young and old, immigrant or not, find the opportunity to read it and discuss it with their loved ones because there is much to discuss.
Pensamientos (thoughts) over the border by carlos b. gil 