Skald is Mark Twain's complete, unabridged 1876 text, all thirty-five chapters and the Conclusion. Wayfarer is an abridgement that keeps much of Twain's own language with the hardest vocabulary and longest sentences eased. Fledgling is a short retelling in simple sentences for new readers.
This is a book of its time. It contains a murder, a grave-robbing, real peril in a cave, schoolroom whippings, boys trying tobacco, and a villain whom Twain names "Injun Joe." The Fledgling level tells these scenes gently and briefly. You may wish to read chapters 9, 29 and 31 together with younger children.
Twain's text uses a racial slur nine times in the speech of his characters. By default this reader prints "slave" in its place, as some school editions do, so that a child's tap never speaks the word aloud. Older students studying the book as Twain wrote it can switch the original wording on here: