I'm so pleased to have revisited this book as an adult. I mainly re-read it so that the content would be fresh for reading James by Percival Everett. I had absolutely no memory of what it was about from when I read it in high school beyond just "Huck and Jim go down the river in a raft." It took me a bit to settle in to the dialects but once I did, I enjoyed the texture that it added to the story, noticing the sometimes subtle differences in the way people spoke and what it seemed like Twain was telegraphing about people's attitudes. I also did some reading about the history of this book and how controversial it was from the day it was published. I knew it was controversial in modern times but didn't fully grasp that it was banned *immediately*. I found Huck's growth throughout the book to be really interesting (and I know this is controversial in and of itself). I liked the "from a child's eyes" perspective because to me, it felt like watching him struggle with the tension between his racist upbringing and the growing realization that Jim might actually be a person not unlike him had an undercurrent of "if this kid can start to figure this out, why can't you adult readers?" I also am apparently in the few that didn't hate the Tom Sawyer antics at the end. It felt to me like Huck grew from pure hero worship of Tom and full trust in him being the leader of the gang to him still going along with it but feeling more like "... but why can't we just set Jim free instead of doing all this nonsense?" and feeling powerless to go against Tom because he knows he can't do this without him. In any case, I am really glad I read this and excited to immediately jump into James and see a modern take on this story written by a Black author. Reading back-to-back classics + modern retellings is truly one of my reading niches right now!