Mississippi River Blues by Tony Abbott Page A

until— thud! —we hit the wall of the library workroom at the exact moment we left it.
    The door squeaked, and Mrs. Figglehopper entered. “Devin … Frankie … you … er … why are you two on the floor?”
    We bolted up.
    â€œWe … um … like the way the floor smells!” said Frankie.
    The librarian gave us a strange look. “I see. Anyway, time’s up, I’m afraid. Your test with Mr. Wexler begins in one minute. I’m sorry you didn’t have much time to look at The Adventures of Tom Sawyer . Sometime you really ought to read it—”
    â€œAgain,” I whispered to Frankie.
    â€œExcuse me?” said Mrs. Figglehopper.
    â€œUm … nothing,” said Frankie.
    She handed Mrs. Figglehopper the treasure. I mean, the book. “Here you go,” she said.
    Just before we left, Mrs. Figglehopper looked at the book, then flipped through it to the last page. She studied it for a second, glanced at us in a strange way, then smiled this tiny, odd smile to herself.
    As we headed down the hall to class, Frankie turned to me. “I’m still not sure about Mrs. Figglehopper and her weird zapper gates. Do you think she knows about how they take us into books?”
    I shrugged. “It is weird how she keeps them around. Maybe someday we’ll find out for sure what she knows. If we ever have to read a book again.”
    â€œSomething tells me we probably will,” said Frankie.
    When we got to class, Mr. Wexler had a huge smile on his face. “Just in time!” he boomed, his eyes blazing. “Prepare to dazzle me with your knowledge of a book I read five times when I was your age! Challenge me!”
    He put the test paper down on our desks.
    Frankie and I sat down and took the test.
    It was awesome. I wrote more words than I thought I ever knew. Whole sentences of them. All about how the author, Mark Twain, was writing about what it was like to grow up on the banks of the Mississippi River and about friendship and the stuff friends did together. And also about summer and what it felt like a long time ago, with all the clean air and the woods and playing in the sun and not having so many worries.
    I wrote about how the book was really about what it means to be a kid. The way we think and feel and how we want to do something really, really bad, then we get tired of it and move on to something else. How we’re afraid sometimes, but how we get through it, anyhow.
    I thought the book was also about friendship—how Tom liked Becky and Huck—and about how it makes you want to do things for your friends.
    Sort of like me and Frankie, I guess.
    I aced the test. Frankie did, too.
    I could tell by the fish-eye look Mr. Wexler gave us when he glanced at our tests that we did really well on it.
    I’m sure he couldn’t figure out how we could possibly know so much about any book, let alone one of his all-time favorites.
    But we’ll never tell.

F ROM THE D ESK OF
    I RENE M. F IGGLEHOPPER , L IBRARIAN
    Dear Reader:
    Did you know that Mark Twain is really the pen name of Samuel Langhorne Clemens? Well, it is. Born in 1835, Sam grew up in the little town of Hannibal, Missouri, on the banks of the Mississippi River.
    As a young man, Sam was a printer’s apprentice, a newspaperman, a traveler, a gold prospector, and finally a steamboat pilot on the Mississippi.
    During the 1860s, he began writing travel articles and humorous stories, some of which made fun of local people. To write more freely, he chose a pen name taken from his days of piloting steamboats. “Mark twain” was the call that announced to the pilot that the river was “twain,” or two fathoms deep (a fathom is six feet).
    Over the next few years, Mark’s reputation as a humorist grew. But it wasn’t until The Adventures of Tom Sawyer was published in 1876 that he was recognized as one of America’s greatest writers for the way he