It's fine to just enjoy the story, as James advises, but Jocelyn Chadwick-Joshua's book is about using Adventures of Huckleberry Finn in the schools. And if the book has only enjoyment to recommend it, while it offends some people, why bother? Like Vern I was somewhat taken aback by the uncritical stance of Kim's review of The Jim Dilemma (though Wes Britton wrote about it in September in a similarly enthusiastic vein). I think that Chadwick-Joshua oversimplifies the issue to the extent of ultimately not being very helpful. She does make good observations about Jim, and - jargon aside - her use of classical rhetoric provides a helpful way of talking about Twain's presentation of Jim and Huck. The oversimplification comes from her consistent THEM vs. US stance. She is always referring to those with whom she disagrees as "opponents." Not just HER opponents, but opponents of Twain's book! These "opponents," who for the most part are unidentified, sort of generic, are always suffering from "misconceptions" and "misinterpretations," which she corrects with THE truth as the argument proceeds. It is an unfortunate matter of timing, I assume, that Jonathan Arac's Huck Finn as Idol and Target came out too late to be dealt with in this book; but Arac raises so many issues challenging Chadwick-Joshua's point of view that her silence on these issues means that the debate hasn't progressed very far. Someone should have said Hold the Presses, to allow for continuity in the line of debate. If that had happened, I imagine that Arac's level of sophistication would have force Chadwick-Joshua to rise to a more complex level of argument. And she might have backed off from her assumption that those who question Adventures of HF's appropriateness for high-school curricula are just "opponents" suffering from "misconceptions." Back to Vern: it may be that Arac is one of those "modern day philistines of political correctness," a "dimwit" and a "bozo." This is a less polite way of reducing people to "opponents." It seems to me singularly unhelpful. Even John Wallace, that easiest of targets, began his campaign against Adventures of HF as "racist trash" (he's a true opponent) because of an emotional trauma suffered by his son when the book was taught in his class. Real people with real sensitivities care about this issue. There's political correctness, perhaps, on both sides of the fence. Dave Barber