Is Tom Sawyer still a top read?

[Scheherazade]

An article from BBC's Magazine:
...Tom Sawyer is an orphan who gets into scrapes with his friend Huckleberry Finn. In one adventure he is given up for dead and watches his own funeral, in another he witnesses a murder. It's a classic adventure tale about a loveable young rogue.

But even fans of the book, written in 1876, admit that the language is a bit archaic. Then there's the book's setting - Mississippi at a time when the slave trade blighted the southern United States...
MORE (http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/magazine/6662271.stm)

[hisgentlepeace]

I too am an african american woman of 41 who has read and enjoyed Tom and his buddy Huck tremendously. In fact, my mother introduced Tom's adventures to me when I was a child. I wanted to try and did attempt at least one trick that Tom played on others ( it just didn't work for some reason). I do recall getting lost in a forset preserves when I was a youngster at a family reunion with some of my other cousins. Whoo what a whipping! My cousins said I bought the whippings on us by comparing us to Tom Sawyer.

Huckleberry Finn came to me as a teenager. My teacher a wonderful caucasion teacher said we shouldn't read it for its racist overtones. So of course I read it. I went away diappointed but very entertained because I found the wording very appropriate for the time period. My mom encouraged me to read it and tell her what I thought. She agreed with me.