TOM SAWYER • DICCIONARIO INGLES.COM • Definition of Tom Sawyer

... recorded in this book really occurred; one or two were experiences of my own, the rest those of boys who were schoolmates of mine. Huck Finn is drawn from life; Tom Sawyer also, but not from an individual—he is a combination of the characteristics of three boys whom I knew, and therefore belongs to the composite order of architecture. The odd superstitions touched upon were all prevalent among children ...

— A Mother's List of Books for Children • Gertrude Weld Arnold

... American writers. He started as a mere professional fun-maker, and he has not done with fun-making even yet, but he has developed in the course of years into a rough and ready philosopher, and he has written two books which are in their own way unique. Tom Sawyer and Huck Finn are the two best boys in the whole wide range of fiction, the most natural, genuine, and convincing. They belong to their own soil, and could have been born and bred nowhere else, but they are no truer locally than universally. Mark Twain can be eloquent when ...

— My Contemporaries In Fiction • David Christie Murray