November 25, 2013
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 danger as they travel the American South. Eric G. Dove provides solid narration in this audio edition. Although his raspy, deep voice doesn’t quite capture the youthful Huck and his naiveté, Dove delivers a lively performance that boasts unique character voices and believable accents. And his pacing is perfect throughout: it’s appropriate to the material and more than able to hold listener attention.
October 1, 1985
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 thanked in some quarters, damned in others. Neider's contribution is twofold: he has restored to its rightful place the great rafting chapter, which the author had lifted from the manuscript-in-progress and dropped into Life on the Mississippi, and he has abridged some of the childish larkiness in the portions in which Huck's friend Tom Sawyer intrudes into this novel. For decades, critics have lamented the absence of the "missing'' chapter and deplored the jarring presence of Tom in episodes that slow the narrative, but not until now has anyone had the temerity to set matters right. In paring back the ``Tom'' chapters (which he fully documents in his lengthy, spirited introduction, with literal line counts of the excised material), Neider has achieved a brisker read. Though there may be some brickbats thrown at him for this ``sacrilege,'' few should object to the belated appearance of the transplanted rafting chapter in the novel in which it clearly belongs. October 25
July 1, 2010
These abridged editions retain some of the flavor of the original books while removing archaic or now offensive words and losing many of the details and vibrancy that make these works classics. With the glorified plot summaries as their introductions to literature, young readers may not want to read the originals. The black-and-white illustrations are also bland.
(Copyright 2010 by The Horn Book, Incorporated, Boston. All rights reserved.)