Marianna Mayer, Adapted by, Mark Twain, Author, Marianna Mayer, Author Dial Books $17.99 (48p) ISBN 978-0-8037-2099-2
Made less satirical than Mark Twain's classic and simplified for younger readers, this retelling is still a lively romp. A beggar and a prince look so alike that they change places but then cannot immediately switch back. Mayer's (The Unicorn and...
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Jan Brett, Author, Mark Twain, Author, Jan Brett, Illustrator Putnam Publishing Group $13.95 (32p) ISBN 978-0-396-08821-9
""On the first day of Christmas,/ My true love gave to me/ A partridge in a pear tree.'' A straightforward beginning to a carol that grows increasingly complicated as both the list of presents and the numbers involved accumulate. Brett's lavish...
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Terry Mort, Author, Mark Twain, Author . Lyons $24.95 (304p) ISBN 978-1-59228-806-9
Selections from Twain's five travel books (about excursions to the American West, the Pacific Islands, India, the Middle East and Europe) spotlight some of his choicest writing, though they lose his rich, digressive context. With the success of...
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Mark Twain, Author, Michael Kiskis, Editor University of Wisconsin Press $25 (301p) ISBN 978-0-299-12540-0
Alas, reports of Twain's death have not once again been exaggerated, but Samuel Langhorne Clemens (1835-1910) has belatedly succeeded in his ambition of ``literally speaking from the grave'' in this collection of 25 autobiographical chapters. In his
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Mark Twain, Author, Evert Geradts, Illustrator, Skip Williamson, Illustrator . Eureka Productions $9.95 (144p) ISBN 978-0-9712464-8-5
With a terrific lineup of artists and unbeatable material, Pomplun has assembled a collection of Mark Twain's work that should delight graphic novel fans and anyone seeking to boost their general cultural knowledge. The stories collected here...
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Mark Twain, Author, Carl Reiner, Performed by , read by Carl Reiner. New Millennium $25 (0p) ISBN 978-1-931056-47-2
With his legendary humor and delightful wit, Reiner gives new life to this classic Twain tale. The multiple Emmy Award winner and recent Television Hall of Fame inductee beautifully shifts between several accents, dialects and moods, letting...
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Edited by Benjamin Griffin, Harriet Elinor Smith, and other editors of the Mark Twain Project. Univ. of California, $45 (776p) ISBN 978-0-520-27278-1
Several chapters into this sprawling volume, Mark Twain (“Sam,” to his friends) professes: “I can say now what I could not say while alive—things which it would shock people to hear.” Though not quite shocking, these rambling reminiscences (spanning
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Mark Twain and Philip C. Stead, illus. by Erin Stead. Doubleday, $24.99 (160p) ISBN 978-0-553-52322-5
Working from notes Twain made after telling an especially successful bedtime story, Philip C. Stead completes the tale of gentle Johnny, whose heart is pure despite his bleak surroundings and cruel grandfather. A magic flower gives him the power to...
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Mark Twain, edited by Benjamin Griffin and Harriet Elinor Smith. Univ. of California, $45 (792p) ISBN 978-0-520-27994-0
This third and final volume of Twain's half-million-word autobiography begins with an amusing reminiscence about a rascally jewelry salesman, dictated in 1907, and ends with a wail of anguish over the tragic death of his daughter, Jean, in 1909. In...
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Mark Twain, read by Eric G. Dove. Dreamscape Media, unabridged, eight CDs, 9.5 hrs., $39.99 ISBN 978-1-62406-919-2
Twain’s classic novel describes the exploits of young Huckleberry Finn as he escapes his hometown and travels down the Mississippi River on a raft with escaped slave Jim. They encounter folks of all walks of life and repeatedly save one another from
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Mark Twain and Don Borchert, Tor, $13.99 trade paper (304p) ISBN 9780765327291
Humorist Borchert (Free for All) presents a novel from an alternate universe, complete with a charming mock-historical forward, in which Twain writes in, and about, an 1870s America plagued by an epidemic of violent, virus-created undead Zum. The...
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Mark Twain, Author, Shelley Fisher Fishkin, Editor, Barry Moser, Illustrator , illus. by Barry Moser. Univ. of California $27.50 (325p) ISBN 978-0-520-24855-7
Fishkin reports that Mark Twain's career-long fascination with instinctual yet intelligent creatures inspired Chuck E. Jones's creation of cartoon icons Wile E. Coyote and Bugs Bunny. Fishkin, director of American studies at Stanford and a
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Mark Twain, Author, Michael Patrick Hearn, Editor, E. W. Kemble, Illustrator . Norton $39.95 (480p) ISBN 978-0-393-02039-7
Hearn, who edited The Wizard of Oz
for Norton's Annotated series, has taken on that formative fiction of American culture, Huckleberry Finn—a seemingly transparent work that, as presented in Hearn's exhaustive research, harbors...
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Mark Twain, read by William Dufris, Tantor Media, unabridged, 10 CDs, 12 hrs., $34.99 ISBN 978-1-4001-1607-2
When Hank Morgan is transported from 19th-century Hartford, Conn., to sixth-century England, his misadventures begin as he navigates a host of dangers en route to becoming “The Boss” of Camelot. William Dufris’s enthusiastic narration is perfect;...
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Mark Twain, Author, William Dufris, Read by Tantor Media $34.99 (0p) ISBN 978-1-4001-0631-8
Considered the first great American novel, part of Finn's charm is the wisdom and sobering social criticism deftly lurking amongst the seemingly innocent observations of the uneducated Huck and the even-less-educated escaped slave, Jim. William...
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Edited by Harriet Elinor Smith, Univ. of California, $34.95 (744p) ISBN 978-0-520-26719-0
Mark Twain is his own greatest character in this brilliant self-portrait, the first of three volumes collected by the Mark Twain Project on the centenary of the author's death. It is published complete and unexpurgated for the first time. (Twain...
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Mark Twain, illus. by Vladimir Radunsky. Enchanted Lion (Consortium, dist.), $14.95 (24p) ISBN 978-1-59270-129-2
Radunsky’s (You?) ink flourishes and adorable, lumpy figures steal the stage from Twain’s essay, printed in a typewritten font and clipped to the pages like notes. The essay parodies the etiquette books of Twain’s time, counseling deviousness over...
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Mark Twain, Author, Peter Deseve, Illustrator, Roy Blount, jr., Introduction by , afterword by Roy Blount Jr. Norton $16.95 (80p) ISBN 978-0-393-04376-1
The Atlantic Monthly, to great hoopla, recently resurrected an 1876 Twain manuscript; in this slim volume, it is reproduced, along with insightful comments from Roy Blount Jr. The question is, do we have a forgotten masterpiece? Or is the Atlantic
...
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Mark Twain, Author, McAvoy Layne, Narrated by , read by McAvoy Layne. AudioEditions $24.95 (0p) ISBN 978-1-57270-428-2
Hearing Layne read Mark Twain's newspaper dispatches from Hawaii gives one the invigorating sense of visiting an exotic locale as well as a different era. Those who treat themselves to these blustery, spirited letters will experience a journey...
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Mark Twain, Author, Charles Neider, Photographer Doubleday Books $16.95 (295p) ISBN 978-0-385-23244-9
In this centenary year of the first American edition of Huckleberry Finn, Neider, who has worked long and well in the thickets of Twain scholarship (this is the ninth Twain volume he has edited), offers a most fitting tribute, for which he will be...
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Edgar Marquess Branch, Editor, Mark Twain, Author, Harriet Elinor Smith, Editor University of California Press $80 (664p) ISBN 978-0-520-03668-0
This auspicious beginning of what may come to be regarded as one of the most important collections of letters by an American author takes 17-year-old Sam Clemens, searching for work as an itinerant printer, from Hannibal, Mo., to age 31, when,...
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Rick Moody, Author, Mark Twain, Author, Bern Porter, Author . PictureBox $29.95 (160p) ISBN 978-0-9713670-3-6
In case fans of alt-country turned art-rock band Wilco didn't get enough pertinent reading material this year—including front man Jeff Tweedy's poetry collection, Adult Head
, and rock critic Greg Kot's affectionate band bio, Wilco:
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