American Boy: The Adventures of Mark Twain
Publication Information
Author:  Brown, Don	Illustrator:  Brown, Don
Title:  American Boy: The Adventures of Mark Twain	Date:  2003
Publisher:  Houghton Mifflin	City:  Bpston
ISBN, paperback:  0-618-17997-6	ISBN, hardback:
Recommended audience:
ABE/ABLE:   Yes	ESOL:
Family:   Yes	Young Adult:
Picture:   Yes
General Information:
Book Type(s):    biography and autobiography, easy reading
HSE Descriptor(s):    language arts - reading
Summary:
This biography of Sam Clemens focuses primarily on his childhood. Readers will see many parallels between young Sam's adventures and those of his famous characters Tom Sawyer and Huck Finn.
Teaching Ideas:
The relationship between childhood and adulthood will be interesting to explore with this book. In writing classes, teachers will want to draw attention to how cleverly Clemens/ Twain used the guidance "write what you know" in his own work, perhaps using a Venn diagram strategy. Since Clemens wrote for newspapers, students could write vignettes from "interviews" with characters from his stories. A Yahooligans search on Mark Twain will yield many interesting online resources, including online versions of _Tom Sawyer_ and _Huck Finn_.
Teaching Strategies:
Creating a Classroom Magazine    http://literacy.kent.edu/eureka/strategies/create_class_zine.pdf
Discussion Webs    http://literacy.kent.edu/eureka/strategies/discussion_webs.pdf
Helping Students in the Writing Process    http://literacy.kent.edu/eureka/strategies/help_writing_process.pdf
Venn Diagrams    http://literacy.kent.edu/eureka/strategies/venn_diagrams.pdf
Unsent Letters    http://literacy.kent.edu/eureka/strategies/unsent_letters.pdf
Keywords: select any link below for a list of resources which also have that keyword
Emotions-Personal Issues > emotions > imagination Family > children > childhood History > time period > 19th Century Literature and Language > literature > American literature Geography > locations > U.S. states/regions > Midwestern United States Literature and Language > authors > Twain, Mark

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