Original author: Mark Twain Retold by author: Alan Venable
The Celebrated Jumping Frog of Calaveras County (1865) In this classic Gold Rush tall tale, '49er Jim will bet on anything that moves. After swindling his fellows with other wild gambles, Jim trains a frog as a champion jumper. But the last laugh is on Jim. And to this day, Calaveras County still holds an annual frog-jumping contest.
A Curious Dream (1870) Suppose you were sitting on your porch late one night, and a skeleton stopped at your gate to tell you that the local cemetery was so run-down that he was looking for a better place be buried? That's how this eerie, funny Halloween yarn begins.
A Story from Life on the Mississippi (1883) In this portion of Twain's great memoir, Twain portrays his boyhood love of steamboats and his early comic yet serious efforts to become the greatest of men: a pilot on the vast, mysterious, dangerous Mississippi River in the days before the Civil War.
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