Tuesday, December 22, 2009

Ten of the best child narrators

For the Guardian, John Mullan named ten of the best child narrators in literature.

One book on the list:
Huckleberry Finn by Mark Twain

Finn is 13 and a brilliantly imagined mixture of wiliness and innocence. On the run from his drunken father and the stern Widow Douglas ("she took me for her son, and allowed she would sivilize me"), he travels down the Mississippi with escaped slave Jim, encountering various feuding or thieving adults along the way. The story is told in his own colloquial manner.
Read about the other child narrators on the list.

Huckleberry Finn is among Katie Couric's favorite books, and is one of James Gray's six best books. It is one of Stephen King's top ten works of literature. Director Spike Jonze and the Where the Wild Things Are film team tagged Huckleberry Finn on their list of the top 10 rascals in literature.

--Marshal Zeringue