Read the sanitized version of Tom Sawyer. He no longer gets in a fight with the new kid in town...that would be promoting violence. Instead, they have a heart to heart talk that results in them seeing past their mutual differences and joining forces to help resolve disputes between all small boys everywhere peacefully.

The sexist parts are removed. Tom no longer comes to the rescue of Becky Thatcher and saves her from a caning, because that would be disempowering her as a strong female in control of her own destiny. The teacher who canes her then gets arrested for assault on a child, and is committed to a criminal psychiatric facility. He emerges some years later, having repented fullsomely, and founds an institute for non-violence.

Tom no longer feeds "painkiller" to the cat. That would be cruelty toward animals. The scene is removed. Tom's pal no longer pesters the pinch bug, and Tom no longer pesters the pinch bug either. They rescue it from drowing in a puddle and then release it.

The murderous Injun Joe is deemed a stereotype deeply offensive to all Native Americans. He gets re-written as a saintly Native American mystic with special healing abilities. He cures his drunken pal of alcoholism with herbal remedies, and assists the young doctor in overcoming his compulsion to rob graves by taking him on a vision quest. No one gets murdered.

No references are made to slaves or "n-ggers" anywhere! We can't have people knowing that such things were once considered part of the status quo, can we? Slavery might break out again all over if people knew about it, after all...

The new, improved version of Tom Sawyer is a story for our times. It's totally lacking in dramatic effect, boring to read, historically all wrong, completely inoffensive to idiots with a chip on their shoulders, and about as much fun to read as chewing on an old shoe!

It will shortly be inflicted on a generation of unfortunate school children, hunkered down in their Neo-Orwellian classrooms, who will decide Mark Twain was one hell of a bad writer...and they'll never read another Mark Twain story again if they can possibly avoid it. ;-P