Well over a century has passed since the publication of The Adventures of Tom Sawyer in 1876, but time has done little to diminish the appeal and enjoyment of this classic story of growing up in midwestern America. The world Mark Twain envisioned for his precocious hero is a "boy-perfect" one, where life is perpetual vacation, where good and evil are clearly defined, awe-inspiring contradictions, and where the joys of independent discovery always outweigh the severity of punishment. "Although my book is intended for the entertainment of boys and girls, I hope it will not be shunned by men and women on that account, for part of my plan has been to try to pleasantly remind adults of what they once were themselves, and of how they felt and thought and talked, and what queer enterprises they sometimes engaged in."-Mark Twain