This is a book that I've never actually read before but I'm glad that I finally got around to it. It's a gentle adventure story of the eponymous Tom and his friends and the pleasures and pains of childhood in the American South. Tom is well-drawn and easy to sympathise with with a freedom that children today can only dream about. Having read it now, I enjoyed it, but I think that if I'd read it when I was a child I'd probably have loved it.

It's very obviously a product of its time in its treatment of black people, with Tom and his friends reflecting the opinions of the time -- something that I'm not entirely sure how I would have dealt with if I had read it when I was younger. I believe that Twain addresses this later in [b:The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn|2956|The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn|Mark Twain|http://ecx.images-amazon.com/images/I/41E85Y9736L._SL75_.jpg|1835605] which should really also be on my to-read list.