The Trouble begins a 8: A Life of Mark Twain in the Wild Wild West
by Sid Fleischman
Greenwillow Books, 2008. Youth Biography, 224 p
This is a lively biography of Samuel Clemens by one of my favorite children's nonfiction writers. Fleishman draws a lot from Clemens' own writings and the accounts of other contemporaries, but, of course, the difficulty when writing about "Mark Twain" is separating fact from fiction. Clemens lived a life as adventurous and exciting as many fictional characters. He wrote about his adventures but often embellished them to make the writing more entertaining. In this biography Fleischman includes the fun parts but is careful to mention when scholars have debates about the historicity of certain events. Fleischman adds an extensive appendix that contains one of Clemens short stories, and a good time line with historical notes. Kids (or grownups) could certainly read this for fun or as a report biography.
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