Imagination

Sharla Keen-Mills

8th-Grade English Teacher, Woodland Junior High School, Fayetteville, Arkansas

Directions:

The teacher should read the excerpt from The Adventures of Tom Sawyer below.

In The Adventures of Tom Sawyer, Mark Twain creates a conversation between Huck Finn and Tom Sawyer regarding the removal of warts. On his way to school, Tom comes upon the “juvenile pariah of the village, Huckleberry Finn,” carrying a dead cat, and he asks, “Say, what is dead cats good for, Huck?”

“Good for? Cure warts with,” Huck replies. Then Tom tries to convince Huck that “spunk-water” is better, but his curiosity about the use of dead cats to cure warts prompts him to ask Huck about the procedure.