Tom Sawyer Abroad »

Riverboat pilot, journalist, failed businessman (several times over): Samuel Clemens -- the man behind the figure of Mark Twain -- led many lives. But it was in his novels and short stories that he created a voice and an outlook on life that will be forever identified with the American character.

The irrepressible Tom Sawyer and Huck Finn, always looking for trouble, find it again in Tom Sawyer Abroad, Twain's once-celebrated but now little-known sequel to his classics The Adventures of Tom Sawyer and The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn.

Tom and Huck have both ranged the length of the Mississippi, but, as Huck declares, "Do you reckon Tom Sawyer was satisfied after all them adventures?....No, he wasn't. It only just pisoned him for more." So the two boys head off to see the unveiling of a futuristic airship only to be kidnapped by its mad inventor! But when the inventor goes overboard in a storm, it's up to Tom and Huck to take control of the airship as it heads out over the seething ocean toward the unknown. Yonder they will encounter robbers, lions, Bedouins, and the perils of the Sahara in their very own Arabian adventure.

Library Journal

Few today may be aware of Twain's 1894 sequel to The Adventures of Tom Sawyer (1876) and The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn (1884). Though this novel is not up to the standard of those two immortal classics, it does make for fun listening as it places Tom, Huck, and former slave Jim in a fantastic balloon voyage across the Atlantic and North Africa. Of special interest is the narrative's frequent allusions to Richard Francis Burton's Arabian Nights. Great literature this is not, but it does contain some nice moments, and younger readers in particular will enjoy listening to actor/director/narrator Grover Gardner's (grovergardner.blogspot.com) delightful performance. [A boxed set collecting this recording together with Gardner's readings of The Adventures of Tom Sawyer and Tom Sawyer, Detective, will be available from Blackstone Audio in August.—Ed.]—R. Kent Rasmussen, Thousand Oaks, CA