The Adventures of Tom Sawyer #2: The Best Fence Painter (Easy Reader Classics)
Kindergarten-Grade 2–The essence of Tom Sawyer's mischief and of his irresistible personality is preserved in these easy readers. Each title focuses on just one episode from the novel, broken down into four brief chapters with simple vocabulary and controlled sentence length. Tom skips his piano lesson in order to go to the swimming hole in the first book and tricks his friends into painting a fence for him in the second. For each of his escapades, he must face Aunt Polly, depicted with old-fashioned charm by Bates, whose colorful, realistic illustrations add a great deal to this interpretation of the classic. Shortened, condensed books are often tedious to read; in an effort to deliver plot, they can run roughshod over the author's style and the character's voice. However, Nichols's adaptations are deliberately less ambitious. The result is a spare but pleasing narration that will provide children with a tiny taste of Twain and, hopefully, a desire to enjoy a larger helping later on.–Gloria Koster, West School, New Canaan, CTCopyright © Reed Business Information, a division of Reed Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.