Mark Twain

With their humor, vivid language, and irreverence, these five stories by Samuel Langhorne Clemens--better known to the world as Mark Twain--will simply delight young readers everywhere. Outstanding paintings by artist Sally Wern Comport add to the amusement of such unique tales as "An Encounter with an Interviewer" and the brief, but pointed, "A Fable." Youngsters will especially appreciate the slyly witty "Advice to Youth," an actual talk Twain delivered to a group of girls in 1882. Sympathetic to children's rebellious yearnings, he turned the traditional moral lectures of his time upside down: "First I will say to you, young friends...Always obey your parents, when they are present. This is the best policy in the long run; because if you don't, they will make you." A perfect way to whet children's appetites and prepare them for Twain's complete novels.

Dr. Gregg Camfield is the editor of The Oxford Companion to Mark Twain and author of Sentimental Twain and Necessary Madness: The Humor of Domesticity in Nineteenth-Century American Literature. Since 1996, he has been a Professor of English at the University of the Pacific.

Sally Wern Comport has won awards from the Society of Illustrators, Communication Arts Magazine, Print Magazine, and Spectrum. Her recent books include Young Reader's Shakespeare: Hamlet, Poetry for Young People: American Poetry, Brave Margaret, and The Great Expedition of Lewis and Clark. She serves on the faculty of the Maryland Institute College of Art.