Review: Tom Sawyer is an Excellent Prequel (Spoilers)

Happy Black History Month! Why we need a month dedicated to people based on the color of their skin, I have no idea, but here we are. For this month, I’ve decided to play a little game with my book reviews that I call “Ban or Unban” where I look at some books that have been banned from schools across the nation because they’re supposedly racist and decide if the banning was for a legit reason or if it’s just another example of the Left being stupid (spoiler alert: it’s just another example of the Left being stupid). If you’re offended, I don’t care.

So, today I’m reviewing Mark Twain’s book The Adventures of Tom Sawyer, a book I read in 9th grade. If you’ve never heard of it 1). why? and 2). it’s the prequel to the much more controversial Adventures of Huckleberry Finn (a book that I will be reviewing next week) that basically sets up the important characters and gives us a look at small-town life on the Mississippi River from the perspective of a 12-year-old boy.

My favorite part about this book is just how it’s written. Mark Twain wrote it from the third-person omniscient POV, which enables us to view Tom’s adventures with a perspective almost akin to a microscope. We can both zoom in on Tom’s character and read about what he’s thinking and what he’s like and zoom out and read about what everyone around him is thinking (though that’s not without some level of bias in favor of Tom). Thus, we can get a good sense of the structure of the town and what life is like on the Mississippi river for a pre-adolescent boy, which fills the story with a sense of childish whimsy and mischief that’s really fun to read, which leads me to my next point….

The other reason why I love this story so much is because of how campy it is. With how ordinary the town is, you would never expect Tom and his best friend, Huck Finn, to do anything extraordinary and yet, they do. They go out on a bunch of adventures through the woods and on the Mississippi, eventually finding treasure at the end of the book, which they split between themselves (this plays a big role in The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn). It’s a very fun and lighthearted story that hearkens back to the days when boys could just be boys and run around, having fun.

So why was this banned from school libraries across the U.S.?

The reason why was apparently because of Tom’s “questionable character” and racism. So, in other words, it was banned because he’s a young boy acting like a mischievous young boy (clearly an example of toxic masculinity) growing up in the 1840s who reflects the attitudes of the time that he’s growing up in. Remember that it was a bunch of teachers who banned this book, even though it could’ve been used as a way to show kids how different and wrong attitudes towards black people were in the 1800s compared to today, which was partially why the book was included in the curriculum that I use.

But I suppose that that would be too racist or something for the Teacher’s/Librarian’s unions and instead of teaching that, we need to teach kids about gay porn, contraceptives, how awful they are for being white, and how victimized they are for being any color but white. Good job, teachers, good job.

This book should be unnbanned.

Until next time,

M.J.