Sylvia Weiser Wendel, M.F.A., wrote: [....] > everything to do with this: Tom Sawyer "talks respectable" and is treated > accordingly, while Huck talks like his Pap -- 'nuff said! The subtle message > kids receive is: Huck is good, but don't be like him -- be like Tom. He'll > make more money. The Mark Twain Journal used to have, and maybe still does have, a funny postcard that made this point by situating "Tom Sawyer's Gang" in a corporate board room with a chart of its profits. But Tom sometimes gets the rap as well. Last October, when a 9th-grader from Hollister, California, stole money from his parents and ran away from home via a flight to Hawaii (a modern-day raft trip to Jackson's Island?), his mother explained, "Tom Sawyer is his hero so he thought he would venture off like [Tom Sawyer] did." A news story about this is online at http://sddt.com/files/librarywire/96wireheadlines/10_96/DN96_10_14/DN96_10_14_ct.html Jim Zwick [log in to unmask] http://web.syr.edu/~fjzwick/