Tom Sawyer explainer video for students, 10 minutes

Tom Sawyer explainer video for teachers, 6 1/2 minutes

Teaching resources

Teaching deck of 10 slides: pdf format, pptx format

Poster with major themes: US letter size, A4 size, A3 size

Email us at books@austi.org to request a copy of a comprehensive class test.

Preface to the Austi Classics edition

When Mark Twain completed The Adventures of Tom Sawyer in 1876, he believed he had written a book primarily for young readers—an escapade of mischief, imagination, and the ungovernable energy of boyhood. Yet, as the decades have shown, the novel’s appeal stretches far beyond childhood. Adults return to its pages not simply for nostalgia, but because Tom’s world reminds us of a time when each day felt limitless and every corner of life shimmered with the promise of adventure.

Twain’s St. Petersburg is both a real place and a mythical one. It echoes the rhythms of small-town America along the Mississippi River, where the author himself grew up, but it also lives in our cultural memory as a symbol of youth unburdened by adulthood’s demands. It is a town where children barter treasures for a turn at whitewashing a fence, where pirate kingdoms rise and fall on a whim, where friendships are forged under the cover of night, and where a dusty cave becomes the stage for courage and consequence.

In writing this novel, Twain set out to capture not just events but a spirit—the restless spirit of a child who seeks meaning through daring. Tom Sawyer is clever, impulsive, and unabashedly alive; he learns his lessons the only way he knows how: by living them. His adventures, though filled with humour, also gesture toward deeper truths about conscience, bravery, and the bittersweet transition from innocence to experience.

This edition offers readers an opportunity to revisit Twain’s classic through both his words and a renewed visual imagination. The sketch-style illustrations that accompany the text evoke the timeless character of the story, presenting scenes that feel as immediate and alive today as they must have when Twain first penned them. They honour the novel’s charm while helping new generations discover the magic of Tom’s world.

Whether you are approaching this story for the first time or returning to it after many years, may this volume serve as an invitation—a call to step back into the fields, rivers, fences, and caves of a bygone America, and to walk once more beside Tom, Huck, Becky, and the rest of the children of St. Petersburg. Their adventures remind us that the heart of youth is not a matter of age, but of spirit.

I hope you enjoy this edition of The Adventures of Tom Sawyer.

Available at Amazon

Buy it at Amazon UK here , at Amazon United States here , and at Amazon Australia here.

Dan Abramson
Sydney Australia
30 November 2025, the 190th birthday of Mark Twain