A few stories written by Mark Twain
More info:
The Adventures of Tom Sawyer
Glosor: äventyr, fiver, fence, tomorrow, graveyard (kyrkogård), paint
Where did Tom live?
Why did he live with his aunt?
What did he like to do? He liked playing & having adventures.
What didn’t he like to do? He didn’t like to go to school & he didn’t like to work.
Why was Aunt Polly angry? He didn’t go to school.
What did she say? You’re a bad boy.
The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn:
A teenager called Huck floats on a raft down the Mississippi River, running away from his bum of a father. He and Jim, a runaway slave, get into a lot of trouble. The book gets more and more exciting, and some parts are funny. One reviewer wrote:
The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn, a masterpiece of humor, characterization, and realism, has been called the first (and sometimes the best) modern American novel. In its hero, a resourceful, unconventional boy with an innate sense of human values, Twain created one of the most memorable characters in fiction. The narrative device of a raft carrying Huck and a runaway slave down the Mississippi enabled Twain to achieve a realistic portrait of American life in the 19th century. His use of authentic vernacular speech revolutionized the language of American fiction and exerted a great influence on many subsequent American writers. (adapted)
Huck Finn Song
"On the Meaning of Thanksgiving" (from Autobiography of Mark Twain):
“Thanksgiving Day, a function which originated in New England two or three centuries ago when those people recognized that they really had something to be thankful for — annually, not oftener — if they had succeeded in exterminating their neighbors, the Indians, during the previous twelve months instead of getting exterminated by their neighbors the Indians. Thanksgiving Day became a habit, for the reason that in the course of time, as the years drifted on, it was perceived that the exterminating had ceased to be mutual and was all on the white man’s side, consequently on the Lord’s side, consequently it was proper to thank the Lord for it.”
"On the American Business Class" (from Autobiography of Mark Twain):
“The multimillionaire disciples of Jay Gould — that man who in his brief life rotted the commercial morals of this nation and left them stinking when he died — have quite completely transformed our people from a nation with pretty high and respectable ideals to just the opposite of that; that our people have no ideals now that are worthy of consideration; that our Christianity which we have always been so proud of — not to say vain of — is now nothing but a shell, a sham, a hypocrisy; that we have lost our ancient sympathy with oppressed peoples struggling for life and liberty; that when we are not coldly indifferent to such things we sneer at them, and that the sneer is about the only expression the newspapers and the nation deal in with regard to such things.”
