Emily Arnold McCully recommends The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn by Mark Twain. “Read this book! It is so cool that our greatest novel speaks to young and old alike. It is a story of America, of what haunts us and what redeems us. A magnificently entertaining adventure, hilarious, moving, gorgeous, and shocking, it is great fun to read aloud. The whole family will savor it and want to talk it over.”
The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn (first published in 1884) is recommended for ages 12 and up. McCully is holding an edition illustrated by Steven Kellogg (Morrow, 1994).
Be sure to check out McCully’s picture books Queen of the Diamond: The Lizzie Murphy Story (Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 2015) and Mirette on the High Wire (G.P. Putnam’s Sons,1992), as well as her young adult biography Ida M. Tarbell, The Woman Who Challenged Big Business and Won (Clarion, 2014).
Learn more at EmilyArnoldMcCully.com.