Readers meet Huckleberry Finn after he's been taken in by Widow Douglas and her sister, Miss Watson, who intend to teach him religion and proper manners. Huck soon sets off on an adventure to help the widow's slave, Jim, escape up the Mississippi to the free states. By allowing Huck to tell his own story, Mark Twain's The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn addresses America's painful contradiction of racism and segregation in a "free" and "equal" society. ( )

Huck Finn is about Huck Finn, Tom Sawyer, and Jim. Huck Finn likes to lie, and so does Tom Saywer. Huckleberry Finn likes to lie because he needs to help himself, and Tom Sawyer likes to lie with drama. Huck Finn in one part dressed up as a girl, and there were lots of exciting parts. My favorite part was when Huckleberry Finn and his dad, Pap, were in his cabin across the Mississippi River, and they were up to a lot. And I have another favorite part, when Jim and Huckleberry found Paps cabin and Pap was dead. There was a King and a Duke, who were frauds, and we don't actually know if they were a King and a Duke because they were frauds.

What I liked about the book: My Dad read this book before me. I like the word Huckleberry because I like the ice cream. It's a long book. The way my Dad read it to me was funny - the language, especially Jim's.

What I didn't like about the book: I liked all of the parts.

-by Naomi Fotenos on Feb 28, 2009 (age 6) ( )

After a few months vivisecting Huck Finn using various types of literary theory in my tenth grade English class, I don't think there is much I can add. But I can say I read it when I was ten, and it was a fun adventure; I read it when I was fifteen, and it was rich in symbolism; and reading it as an adult it is a relevant delight. It grows with us and with our society.

A must-have. ( )

This is a book that my dad read to me when I was little (often, I believe, switching in "n-word" for the full slur), that I slogged through in high school, and that I rediscovered my passion for in college. Twain is so *clever*--take the section about the Shepherdsons and the Grangerfords, a saga that's part Romeo and Juliet, part Cain and Abel, and part screwball comedy (with a shocking tragic end)--but there's also real depth and meaning behind Huck's journey--the physical, and the emotional one. This is really the story of a boy finding his moral center in a time of corrupted ethics. I think about the scene where Huck decides he's willing to go to Hell if that's the price of rescuing Jim, his friend, and I *know* why this is a classic.