BC-Axeman

One word: "unabridged". There are already many abridged editions of Twain classics to clean up the language and to make them easier for kids to read. I was amazed the first time I read an unabridged version, how much better it all fit together. I could almost start talking in the accents as they were written. Twain spelled a lot of words phonetically to convey the accents in the quotes. I started looking inside of covers to find "unabridged" so that I knew I was getting what the author wanted to write.