The Trouble Begins at 8: the Life of Mark Twain in the Wild Wild West by Sid Fleischman

This is a lively biography of Samuel Clemens by one of my favorite children's nonfiction writers.  Fleishman draws a lot from Clemens' own writings and the accounts of other contemporaries, but, of course the difficulty when writing about "Mark Twain" is separating fact from fiction.  Clemens lived a life as adventurous and exciting as many fictional characters.  He wrote about his adventures but often embellished them to make the writing more entertaining. In this biography Fleischman includes the fun parts but is careful to mention when scholars have debates about the historicity of certain events.  I actually learned new things about Clemens from this biography.  I didn't know that his novel writing came relatively late in his life, and that much of his earlier fortune came from his performances on the lecture circuit. I also didn't realize that he had traveled so widely. Fleischman adds an extensive appendix that contains one of Clemens short stories, and a good time line with historical notes.  Kids could certainly read this for fun or as a report biography.  This is not a new book, but I am glad I picked it up. (2008, 224 p.)