Frank Carlson Library

The adventures of a mischievous young boy and his friends growing up in a Mississippi River town in the nineteenth century. Who could forget the pranks, the adventures, the sheer fun of Tom Sawyer? It's something every child should experience and every child will love. From Tom's sly trickery with the whitewashed fence, when he cleverly manipulates everyone so they happily do his work for him, to his and Becky Thatcher's calamities in Bat Cave, the...

On a beautiful June day in 1965, a dozen girls-classmates at a picturesque Blue Ridge women's college-launched their homemade raft (inspired by Huck Finn's) on a trip down the Mississippi. It's Girls A-Go-Go Down the Mississippi read the headline in the Paducah, Kentucky, paper.

Thirty-five years later, four of those "girls" reunite to cruise the river again. This time it's on the luxury steamboat, The Belle of Natchez, and there's no publicity.

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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...

"Marie-Grace can't wait to begin her journey up the Mississippi River with her father. The steamboat they're traveling on is the biggest and fanciest boat Marie-Grace has ever seen. It's crowded with all sorts of interesting passengers, including Wilhelmina Newman, a girl her age. Wilhelmina is traveling alone, and she's carrying a secret in one of her trunks--clues to hidden Gold Rush treasure. Marie-Grace and Wilhelmina have to unravel the clues...

After her father, a prominent Natchez businessman, loses their fortune and home in 1850, Julienne Ashby aims to resuscitate their last possession - a dilapidated steamboat - to make a profit and restore the Ashby name along the mighty Mississippi. Desperate for help, Julienne hires Dallas Bronte, a captain whose drinking has scarred his reputation. The struggles they face are as challenging as the mutual feelings of love and hate they must sort out....

After being turned out by his mean-spirited uncle, Chris Dahlberg decides to harvest some of the timber on his grandfather's land in Minnesota and float the giant logs down the Mississippi River to market in St. Louis.

Huck Finn and a runaway slave named Jim run away and float down the Mississippi River on a raft, experiencing all kinds of adventures.

Just before the Civil War, presidential candidates, Abraham Lincoln and Steven Douglas board the riverboat in New Orleans to campaign throughout the South. But there are two passengers--a wealthy cattle owner and his wife--who believe a war will bring them considerable gain. And they'll do anything to make it happen.

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

The adventures and pranks of a mischievous boy growing up in a Mississippi River town in the early nineteenth century.