Nineteenth-century America and the world of Samuel L. Clemens, better known as Mark Twain, come to life as children journey back in time with this history- and literature-laden activity book. The comprehensive biographical information explores Mark Twain as a multi-talented man of his times, from his childhood in the rough-and-tumble West of Missouri to his many careers-steamboat pilot, printer, miner, inventor, world traveler, businessman, lecturer, newspaper reporter, and most important, author-and how these experiences influenced his writing. Twain-inspired activities include making printer’s type, building a model paddlewheel boat, unmasking a hoax, inventing new words, cooking cornpone, planning a newspaper, observing people, and writing maxims. An extensive resource section offers information on Twain’s classics, such as “Tom Sawyer” and “The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn.”       

 The darling mispronunciations of childhood!–dear me, there’s no music that can touch it; and how one grieves when it wastes away and dissolves into correctness, knowing it will never visit his bereaved ear again.
- A Connecticut Yankee in King Arthur’s Court

…this curious & pathetic fact of life: that when parents are old & their children grown up, the grown-up children are not the persons they formerly were; that their former selves have wandered away, never to return again, save in dream-glimpses of their young forms that tarry a moment & gladden the eye, then vanish & break the heart.
- “Memorial to Olivia Susan Clemens”

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