The Trouble Begins at 8

Who better to tell the story of that wonderful storyteller, Mark Twain, than that wonderful storyteller, Sid Fleischman? Fleischman starts at the beginning and relates all the tales about the man, Mark Twain, true and apocryphal. It was the aphorisms that was so wonderful: “Man—a creature made at the end of a week's work when God was tired” and “Man is the only animal who blushes—or needs to” and “Everybody complains about the weather but nobody does anything about it” and “The reports of my death are greatly exaggerated” and, my favorite, “When I was a boy of fourteen my father was so ignorant, I could hardly stand to have the old man around. But when I got to be twenty-one, I was astonished at how much he had learned in seven years.”

If only motion pictures had been invented to capture this man! He was such a presence, full of wit and fun. I wish I'd been alive to see him in person.