On April Fool's Day in 1856, a shape-shifting grifter boards a Mississippi riverboat to expose the pretenses, hypocrisies, and self-delusions of his fellow passengers. The con artist assumes numerous identities - a disabled beggar, a charity fundraiser, a successful businessman, an urbane gentleman - to win over his not-entirely-innocent dupes. The central character's shifting identities, as fluid as the river itself, reflect broader aspects of human...

The adventures of a mischievous young boy and his friends growing up in a Mississippi River town in the nineteenth century.

Each Bendon Junior Classic has been adapted and illustrated with care to introduce young readers (and the young at heart!) to a world of famous authors, characters, ideas, and stories that have been loved for generations. Collect all of our Adapted Junior Classics to build your young reader's library! The Adventures of Tom Sawyer by author Mark Twain - An 1876 novel by Mark Twain, Tom Sawyer tells the tale of An imaginative and mischievous boy growing...

Little Toot finally finds the old steamboats just in time to urge them out of retirement to save the bayou animals from the flooding Mississippi.

"A few months ago, Winslow Houndstooth put together the damnedest crew of outlaws, assassins, cons, and saboteurs on either side of the Harriet for a history-changing caper. Together they conspired to blow the dam that choked the Mississippi and funnel the hordes of feral hippos contained within downriver, to finally give America back its greatest waterway. Songs are sung of their exploits, many with a haunting refrain: "And not a soul escaped alive."...

The Alden children travel on a Mississippi paddle-wheel steamer to visit an old family friend in his cabin near Hannibal, Missouri, and try to discover who is responsible for the mysterious activities near the house.

In the summer of 1932, on the banks of Minnesota's Gilead River, the Lincoln Indian Training School is a pitiless place where Native American children, forcibly separated from their parents, are sent to be educated. It is also home to Odie O'Banion, a lively orphan boy whose exploits constantly earn him the superintendent's wrath. Odie and his brother, Albert, are the only white faces among the hundreds of Native American children at the school. After...

Huck Finn, a 19th-century boy floating down the Mississippi River on a raft with Jim, a runaway slave, becomes involved with a feuding family, two scoundrels pretending to be royalty, and Tom Sawyer's aunt, who mistakes him for Tom.

"From Percival Everett--a recipient of the NBCC Lifetime Achievement Award and finalist for the Pulitzer Prize, Booker Prize, and numerous PEN awards--comes James, a retelling of The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn, both harrowing and ferociously funny, told from the enslaved Jim's point of view. When the enslaved Jim overhears that he is about to be sold to a man in New Orleans, separated from his wife and daughter forever, he decides to hide on nearby...