A Beginning, a Muddle, and an End: The Right Way to Write Writing
First introduced in the 2004 book The End of the Beginning: Being the Adventures of a Small Snail (and an Even Smaller Ant), Avon the Snail and Edward the Ant return, this time on a quest to write writing. Avon has decided to become an author, and Edward, with more ideas than practical ways to contribute, is determined to assist. The plot is minimal, and exists only as a field on which Avi engages in every manner of wordplay, crafting an early chapter book that sits squarely between Peggy Parish’s Amelia Bedelia stories and Abbot and Costello’s “Who’s on First?” routine. The small trim size, large typeface, and Tusa’s sweet pencil sketches suggest an audience even younger than the target readership, though some of them won’t catch all the puns. But it’s easy to imagine the right child sitting at the dinner table or in the back seat of the car, or traipsing through the grocery store, exhausting the patience of  assembled, captive family with a word-for-word account of Avon and Edward’s hilarious exploits. Grades 1-3. --Thom Barthelmess