“When Mark Twain was told in 1905 by the librarian of the Brooklyn Public Library that copies of The Adventures of Tom Sawyer and The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn had been removed from the shelves of the children’s room, he replied, “I wrote Tom Sawyer and Huck Finn for adults exclusively, and it always distresses me when I find that boys and girls have been allowed access to them. The mind that becomes soiled in youth can never again be washed clean.”

“When Mark Twain was told in 1905 by the librarian of the Brooklyn Public Library that copies of The Adventures of Tom Sawyer and The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn had been removed from the shelves of the children’s room, he replied, “I wrote Tom Sawyer and Huck Finn for adults exclusively, and it always distresses me when I find that boys and girls have been allowed access to them. The mind that becomes soiled in youth can never again be washed clean.”

— Richard Shenkman