THE ADVENTURES OF TOM SAWYER

THE COZY VERSION

Mischievous Tom Sawyer lives with his Aunt Polly in the small town of St. Petersburg, Missouri. One day, as punishment for hiding in the pantry and stealing from the jam jar, Tom is made to whitewash a fence. On his way home, he spots a pretty girl in the window of Judge Thatcher’s house. At school, he promises his love to the girl, Becky, and gives her a kiss, only to make her cry by mentioning an old flame.

When Becky refuses to take him back, Tom and Huckleberry Finn, the son of the town drunk, head off to Jackson’s Island to play pirates. After camping overnight, they realize there are ferries on the river searching for them, which makes them happy. They stay on the island, where they manage to survive a terrible thunderstorm. When they finally make it home, the town is overjoyed to discover they’re alive.

After winning over Becky by taking the blame for a book she’s torn, Tom joins her for a picnic with their classmates. All of the children venture into a cave, but Tom and Becky get lost. Soon they run out of food and candles, but just as all hope seems lost, Tom discovers a way out. Eventually Tom and Huck go back to the cave and find the treasure they’ve been looking for—a box of gold!

STORY TIME

Cozy Classics uses a simple one word/one image format to help babies and toddlers build vocabulary and learn everyday concepts such as body parts, emotions, animals, relationships, actions, and opposites. However, Cozy Classics organizes everyday words in a more unique way: through story. By putting words in the context of a story, our books help children find further meaning through a growing sense of narrative.

As children get older, parents can expand on the stories in ever more elaborate ways. If you need a little help, just use the brief synopsis on the back of each book or the longer synopses (the Cozy version) above. But there’s no right or wrong way to read Cozy Classics. Use the words and images as prompts to invent stories of your own and encourage your children to do the same.

Parents can enliven their storytelling with quotations from the originals. Below are some of our favorites from The Adventures of Tom Sawyer that go well with “the Cozy version.” Quotations can lead to whole passages until one day children are enthralled by the richest versions of all: the classics themselves.

Quotations from The Adventures of Tom Sawyer

• “There! I might ‘a’ thought of that closet. What you been doing in there?”

“Nothing.”

“Nothing! Look at your hands. And look at your mouth. What is that truck?”

“I don’t know, aunt.”

“Well, I know. It’s jam—that’s what it is. Forty times I’ve said if you didn’t let that jam alone I’d skin you.”

• Tom appeared on the sidewalk with a bucket of whitewash and a long-handled brush. He surveyed the fence, and all gladness left him and a deep melancholy settled down upon his spirit.

• “Now, Becky, it’s all done—all over but the kiss. Don’t you be afraid of that—it ain’t anything at all. Please, Becky.” And he tugged at her apron and the hands.

By and by she gave up, and let her hands drop; her face, all glowing with the struggle, came up and submitted.

• “Oh, Tom! Then I ain’t the first you’ve ever been engaged to!”

The child began to cry. Tom said:

“Oh, don’t cry, Becky, I don’t care for her any more.”

• He would be a pirate! That was it! now his future lay plain before him, and glowing with unimaginable splendor. How his name would fill the world, and make people shudder! How gloriously he would go plowing the dancing seas, in his long, low, black-hulled racer, the Spirit of the Storm, with his grisly flag flying at the fore!

• They came back to camp wonderfully refreshed, glad-hearted, and ravenous; and they soon had the camp-fire blazing up again.

• The storm culminated in one matchless effort that seemed likely to tear the island to pieces, burn it up, drown it to the treetops, blow it away, and deafen every creature in it, all at one and the same moment. It was a wild night for homeless young heads to be out in.

• That was Tom’s great secret—the scheme to return home with his brother pirates and attend their own funerals.

• “Who’s ready for the cave?”

Everybody was. Bundles of candles were procured, and straightway there was a general scamper up the hill. The mouth of the cave was up the hillside—an opening shaped like a letter A.

• “Can you find the way, Tom? It’s all a mixed-up crookedness to me.”

“I reckon I could find it—but then the bats. If they put our candles out it will be an awful fix. Let’s try some other way, so as not to go through there.”

“Well. But I hope we won’t get lost. It would be so awful!” and the girl shuddered at the thought of the dreadful possibilities.

• He described how he labored with her and convinced her; and how she almost died for joy when she had groped to where she actually saw the blue speck of daylight; how he pushed his way out at the hole and then helped her out; how they sat there and cried for gladness…

• “My goodness, Huck, lookyhere!”

It was the treasure-box, sure enough, occupying a snug little cavern, along with an empty powder-keg, a couple of guns in leather cases, two or three pairs of old moccasins, a leather belt, and some other rubbish well soaked with the water-drip.

“Got it at last!” said Huck, ploughing among the tarnished coins with his hand. “My, but we’re rich, Tom!”