Customer Reviews

A Brilliant Streak: The Making of Mark Twain

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This book was a very good book. It tells most of the things you need to know about Mark Twain, and it tells them in an interesting way. The only problem with using this book to write a report about Mark Twain's life is that it doesn't include some things that you might need to know. For example, it doesn't say the school he went to (which was John Dawson school). It also doesn't say too much about his children or wife. But it does tell a lot of good details, even little ones, about his life. I think this is a good book if you want to learn about Mark Twain or write a report about him.

The cover illustration of "A Brilliant Streak: The Making of Mark Twain" shows the familiar visage of a white haired Twain, decked out in a white shirt, white tie and white jacket. However, young readers who check out this juvenile biography of the great writer by Kathryn Lasky, illustrated by Barry Moser, will discover that it stops telling his story well before Samuel Clemens becomes the famous figure on the front cover. In doing so Lasky makes good use of the what Twain wrote on the last page of "The Adventures of Tom Sawyer," where he pointed out that a history of a boy has to stop before it becomes the history of a man.

"A Brilliant Streak" begins with Clemens being born the night Halley's comet streaked across the sky in 1835 and ends with him dying the day after it returned seventy-five years later. But the climax of Lasky's story comes when "The Celebrated Jumping Frog of Calaveras County" was printed in 1865 and Mark Twain became known as the Wild Humorist of the Pacific Slope. Getting to the point is, in Lasky's words, the story of "one of the longest childhoods in history." It was only when fame found the boy who had become Mark Twain that he had to grow up fast.

The boy who became the legendary Mark Twain was, like his famous creation Tom Sawyer, interested in exploring haunted caves and dreaming of finding a hidden cache of pirate's gold. Lasky shows how playing hooky in Hannibal, Missouri, piloting steamboats on the Mississippi River, and other adventures from Twain's youth not only influenced his life but figured prominently in the books he would come to write. Underscored in the narrative is the idea that the vivid imagination and knack for manipulating the truth that often got young Sam Clemens into trouble were the same factors that made his such a great storyteller.

There are other books that will tell the story of what happened when Mark Twain became the world famous writer of "The Adventures of Tom Sawyer," "Adventures of Huckleberry Finn," and "A Connecticut Yankee in King Arthur's Court." If young readers want to do the proverbial read more about it there is a list of books about Mark Twain (and select books by the author as well) in the back of this book. Of course, the best advice I can give you is to read those books Twain wrote first before you go on to learn more about the man who wrote them. The greatest line in American literature is found in "Huckleberry Finn" and if there is one thing you should do with regards to the life and works of Mark Twain it is read that classic American novel and discover it for yourself.