Mark Twain: Young Writer (Childhood of Famous Americans Series) Book

This is the third book of this series that my kids and I have read and it's a fantastic series. The books are slightly fictionalized, so they read like a story rather than a biography.

My kids loved reading about Sammy's club and his cave and how he finally made his dream come true of becoming a steamboat captain. And I finally learned how he chose the pen name Mark Twain! It was a phrase he would hear the rivermen say as they were measuring the depth of the water. Mark Twain was their way of saying the water was deep enough for the boat (the mark came to two (twain) fathoms) - or, in other words, safe water.