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Start giftingThe Trouble Begins at 8
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Learn moreMark Twain was born fully grown, with a cheap cigar clamped between his teeth. So begins Sid Fleischman's ramble-scramble biography of the great American author and wit, who started life in a Missouri village as a barefoot boy named Samuel Clemens.
Abandoning a career as a young steamboat pilot on the Mississippi River, Sam took a bumpy stagecoach to the far West. In the gold and silver fields, he expected to get rich quick. Instead, he got poor fast, digging in the wrong places. His stint as a sagebrush newspaperman led to a duel with pistols. Had he not survived, the world would never have heard of Tom Sawyer or Huckleberry Finnâor redheaded Mark Twain.
Samuel Clemens adopted his pen name in a hotel room in San Francisco and promptly made a jumping frogâand himselfâfamous. His celebrated novels followed at a leisurely pace, his quips at jet speed: "Don't let schooling interfere with your education," he wrote.
Here, in high style, is the story of a wisecracking adventurer who came of age in the untamed Westâan ink-stained rebel who surprised himself by becoming the most famous American of his time.
Sid Fleischman (1920â2010) wrote more than sixty books for children, adults, and magicians. Among his many awards was the Newbery Medal for his novel The Whipping Boy. The author described his youth as a magician and newspaperman in his autobiography The Abracadabra Kid.
Joe Barrett, an actor and Audie Award and Earphones Awardâwinning narrator, has appeared both on and off Broadway as well as in hundreds of radio and television commercials.
Reviews
â[A] wonderfully well-told account of Twainâs formative years, his entertaining fabrications, and a bewitching procession of ornery riverboat pilots, perilous stagecoach journeys, and quixotic quests for gold. It is so buoyantly written that the author seems to have been visited by the charming and restless spirit of young Twain himself.â
âThe troubleâentertaining trouble indeedâbegins on page one as Fleischman brings our national comedic treasure to life.â
âFleischman nearly channels Mark Twainâs voice, making great use of his subjectâs wit to contextualize his place in American lettersâŚcolorful detail.â
âWith a Twainian lilt to the prose, the book mingles deftly shaped research with snippets from Twainâs writings.â
âThe seven years that the writer spent meandering the Wild West are at the heart of the book. Fleischman chronicles Clemensâ various bouts of gold fever and get-rich-quick schemes in the Nevada Territory and the San Francisco area, but shows that it was always his newspaper writing that provided stabilityâŚAlthough similar in scope to Kathryn Laskyâs A Brilliant Streak: The Making of Mark Twain, Fleischmanâs account is more engaging as he slips easily into Twainâs drawling cadences.â
âHighly enjoyableâŚNo worthier Twain bio will cross a childâs path than this feisty tale.â
âWhat truly sets this biography in a class by itselfâŚis how enthusiastically Fleischman assumes Twainâs tone.â
âSamuel Clemensâ life, travel, and experiences provided him with the ideas from which his stories grew. Just how much the stories grew was the question that Sid Fleischman tackled when he researched this bookâŚClemensâ adventurous life as a printerâs apprentice, riverboat pilot, writer, gold seeker, and storyteller, to name just a few of his vocations, is wittily shared in this biographyâŚThe title of this book is based on the advertisement posters from the start of his career as a public lecturer in the theater.â
âJoe Barrettâs narration isnât flashyâthe anecdotes must have been funnier in Twainâs lecturesâbut he gets the information across well. At the same time, Barrett gives the biography a warm, nostalgic tone that helps listeners relate to the legendary American author. The book also includes a short story and a time line (with a few wry asides). This well-written history of Twain makes a good introduction for those whoâve read his stories but know little about the man.â
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