#136 in Adventure
The Adventures of Tom Sawyer
- 250
- Pages
- about 4.5 h
- Reading time
- Series 1980 +11
- On screen
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Our view
Twain’s novel is a string of boyhood escapades in a small town on the Mississippi, loosely joined and told with real charm and humour. It is plainly a book of its time: some readers are jarred by its racial slurs and by the way it depicts Native Americans, and adults who decide to read it with children should know that. It probably hits hardest when read young, but its mischief still holds up.
The view of the BookRank editors, written from readers’ ratings and comments. It does not affect the score or the book’s place in a ranking.
About the book
The Adventures of Tom Sawyer is a novel by Mark Twain published on June 9, 1876, about a boy, Tom Sawyer, growing up along the Mississippi River. It is set in the 1830s–1840s in the town of St. Petersburg, which is based on Hannibal, Missouri, where Twain lived as a boy. In the novel, Sawyer has several adventures, often with his friend Huckleberry Finn. Originally a commercial failure, the book ended up being the best-selling of Twain's works during his lifetime.
Reading order · Tom Sawyer books
Full order & progress →- The Adventures of Tom SawyerThis book
7.67.6 / 10 - Adventures of Huckleberry Finn
7.97.9 / 10 - Tom Sawyer Abroad
–Not ranked yet - Tom Sawyer, Detective
–Not ranked yet - Tom Sawyer's Conspiracy
–Not ranked yet
On screen
This book has been adapted for the screen 12 times — from 1917 to 2015.
- SeriesThe Adventures of Tom SawyerIMDb
- FilmThe Adventures of Tom SawyerIMDb
- TV filmTom SawyerIMDb
- FilmTom SawyerIMDb
- FilmTom and HuckIMDb
- FilmTom SawyerIMDb
- FilmTom SawyerIMDb
- TV filmThe Adventures of Tom Sawyer and Huckleberry FinnIMDb
- FilmHuck and TomIMDb
- FilmTom SawyerIMDb
- SeriesHuckleberry Finn and His FriendsIMDb
- FilmBand of RobbersIMDb
Adaptation data: Wikidata · On screen →
Where the score comes from
The sources average 7.5 across 1,377 ratings. With that many, the reader vote carries 90% of the weight and the score stays at 7.6 — the Adventure average of 7.8 barely moves it.
| Source | Average | Ratings | Weight |
|---|---|---|---|
| Open Library | 7.9 | 159 | 12% |
| Google Books | 8.0 | 6 | 0% |
| Hardcover | 7.5 | 1.2K | 88% |
Frequently asked
What age is The Adventures of Tom Sawyer for?
The Adventures of Tom Sawyer sits on the Middle grade shelf in the sources we use, which by convention means roughly ages 8–12. This is a guide from the book’s category, not a publisher’s age rating. It has 250 pages — shorter than 83% of the ranked books in Adventure.
In this book
Themes this book shares with others — each leads to the best books on it.
If you liked this
Same shelf — Adventure — with scores between 7.5 and 7.7, closest to this book.
