Here is the story of Tom, Huck, Becky, and Aunt Polly; a tale of adventures, pranks, playing hookey, and summertime fun. Written by the author sometimes called "the Lincoln of literature" The Adoentures of Tom Sawer was surprisingly neither a critical nor a financial success when it was first published in 1876. It was Mark Twain’s first novel. However, since then Tom "Sawyer has become his most popular work, enjoying dramatic, film, and even Broadway musical interpretations.
Mark Twain wrote funnier books than any American author who wasn’t just being a goof. There is a place for goofy writers, and we have made a lot of room for them in our literary tradition, because we like to laugh. But Twain’s novels are not goofy, for all their comic jazz--their characters and scenes don’t vanish from the mind the minute the laughter ends, as is the case with pure comedy.
I should add that the novels do not strike a reader as being as cussedly profound as people have come to call them. People are tempted to look for profundity as the years pass, and no one writes books as good as old ones, and there have not been many books as good as Twain’s, especially The Adventures of Tom Sawyer and The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn, the book that features the great character we first meet here, Huck Finn. But the story in The Adventures of Tom Sawyer doesn’t aim for being especially deep or significant it aims for being funny and genuine, and it turns out to be pretty cool as well.