Mark Twain's rare insight into that remarkable combination of unexpected sweetness and fiendish ingenuity that we call Boy was never keener than in his ageless story of Huckleberry Finn's adventures with his friend Tom Sawyer on the great Mississippi.

To escape the disreputable old reprobate who is his father, Huck stages his own murder in a manner so elaborate and suitably bloody that he does not wish to spoil his artistry by returning to his home with the Widow Douglas. Instead he and his old friend Jim, the runaway Negro, take to a raft on the river and embark upon a series of excruciatingly funny escapades.

Of course trouble finds them with a minimum of effort. Two delightful humbugs, the king and the duke, see in the wanderers a matchless opportunity to profit by such gullibility. But the two rapscallions overreach themselves and are last seen riding out of town on a rail.

Many people consider Huckleberry Finn Mark Twain's masterpiece; and it may well be so, for the book has remained an inexhaustible source of entertainment for young and old for over half a century.

From the dust jacket of the Illustrated Junior Library edition