About a month ago, the sign on the high school near our house changed. The text went from 'congratulations graduates' to 'reading is required this summer' and the tone went from celebratory to threatening. I was simultaneously surprised by the direct and demanding nature of the promotion and guilt-ridden as my reading hiatus spread from one week to four. So after the tenth time running by the sign, I followed instructions, picked out a book, and made a commitment to fulfill my neighborhood quota.
I chose a novel that is most likely on many required reading lists this summer: The Adventures of Tom Sawyer. I finished it earlier this week, and as I put it back on the shelf, I thought to myself how enlightened I had become.
It provided context to my favorite computer game growing up. (Actually, I should say second favorite - the best game was Peril's of Rosella, but it required the trusty partnership of my sister who made me less nervous about going into battle against ogres, witches and whales.) The Adventures of Tom Sawyer was my favorite solo game. The insertion of a floppy disk, the flip of a big button, and the characteristic revving and humming, signaling the start-up of one of the first IMBs to hit the general consumer market, made the screen light up and the game start. Your goal was to move Tom through a maze, collect all the apples, and avoid capture by one of three people running after you. After reading Tom Sawyer, I finally figured out who the Indian, the girl and the old woman with the broom were.
I now know that there is a little more character in Peter's middle name - Thomas. Playing pirates, robbers, and treasure hunters, going fishing, finding the most unique friends, not wearing shoes, and showing off to get the girls' attention - that's Peter Thomas. My husband sewed a pirate patch on his shirt on Wednesday morning before he left for his annual sharking competition. He has just about found all the Huck Finns in the world and made them his best friends. If given the option, I'm sure he'd go without shoes. And to get my attention, all he needed to do was backwards flip off the boat, walk on his hands, and light up a grill.
Finally, had I not sworn of reading entirely from first to seventh grade, I would have made this book required reading for my summer trips to Quincy, Illinois with my family. Every summer, we would spend a week with my grandparents in the small city at the western tip of Illinois, nestled on the Mississippi River, up stream from Hannibal where Tom and Huck used to play. My siblings and I wrote our own stories on the Mississippi every summer, but knowing the we were walking in the footsteps of Tom, Huck, Joe Harper, Becky and Injun Joe, would have been nice.
So I'm now back in Quincy for the 2012 family reunion, about ready to live it up Tom Sawyer style.
If you haven't read it, Tom Sawyer is worth the read - not only for the beautiful portrait of Americana that Mark Twain's offers the reader, but for the opportunity to see the world through a child's eyes and to see everyday as an adventure.
