Great kid's biography. ( )

This book starts off as a tale which is fitting for a tale writer such as Mark Twain. It then back tracks to the day he was born. This book is very factual and gives a date on almost every page. It basically lists the life of Mark Twain out in a timeline format which is different than a children's story. The events that are told of his childhood and friends are characters in the stories he would one day write about. This book introduces slavery from a young, white boy's point of view. It also talks about the role of the Mississippi river and how printing articles came to be. ( )

Summary: This book is a biography about the famous author Mark Twain. As a child he was called Samuel Clemens and he was a very mischievous child. This book tells of various things that happened to Sam and his friends and family as he was growing up. It tells of how he snuck out one night to go ice skating on the river, and how he loosened a bolder to send it crashing down a hill into a shed. When Samuel became an adult he moved away and changed his name to Mark Twain. He eventually became an author and he had great success writing stories such as The Adventures of Tom Sawyer.

Personal reaction: I have two very mischievous boys so I loved reading this book. They are young now but I can definitely see them getting into the same mischief that Samuel got into as a boy. I thought that this was a great book and the way that the stories are told makes it a fun book for children to read.

Extension ideas:
1. In the classroom, the teacher could have children write stories and articles as if they are writing them for a newspaper like Mark Twain did for his first job.
2. The students could read Mark Twain's books and then the teacher and children could discuss how his childhood influenced the books that he wrote.

A very well written, nicely illustrated book by children's author Don Brown about the life of young Sam Clemens of Missouri, and how he turned himself into Mark Twain, and the people and places he knew growing up along the Mississippi River into Huck Finn, Tom Sawyer, and the rest of his unforgettable characters and stories. Recommended for Grades K-5, with the older ones more likely to understand the nice foreshadowing of Twain's later life. ( )

This was another outstanding biography of the early life of an important historical figure in American and literary history. I had no idea of the parallels that existed between his own life and that of the characters in Tom Sawyer and Huck Finn. It's all explained here. Great book. A must have for any biography shelf. ( )