Avi (1937 - )

His Life:

He was an avid reader. Avi says that the first step on his course to writing professionally was reading. He learned more from reading--everything from comic books and science magazines to histories, plays, and novels--than he learned in school. He wrote during his senior year his decision to be a witer. "I can't wait! I've made up my mind."

Like many teens, Avi felt like an outsider.i"When I was sixteen or seventeen I looked like I was twelve or thirteen. At that time that means a lot to you. It's hardly anyone's fault but you blame it on everybody, right?" Avi reflected: "I've led a very ordinary life in most respects. I think my adolescence was unhappy in the way that many adolescents' lives are unhappy."

At Antioch University, I really started to write seriously,"

After school, Avi took a job in the theater collection of the New York Public Library. Enrolling in night school to study librarianship, he began a twenty-five-year career as a librarian. For several years, Avi wrote children's books and then wrote No More Magic. Suddenly I felt 'This is right! I'm writing novels and I love it.' From then on I was committed to writing novels."

His Books:

When Chris's old bicycle disappears, he becomes convinced that magic is at work, so he and his friend, Muffin, set out to find the missing bike and prove to their skeptical parents that magic is real.

From a reader: It's just about a boy and at Halloween he leaves his bike outside. A "warlock" comes and steals it. He and his friend Eddie meet a new girl and become friends. They go out to look for his bike. Along that time he tells the police to look for his bright green bike,and that it was stolen by a "warlock." The police thought he was joking so they apparently didn't believe him.

Encounter at Easton (sequel to Night Journeys) -The year is 1768. In eight years, the American Revolution will begin. Two indentured servants, little more than children, escape first from their master and then from a search party determined to turn them over to the authorities. They hope to find work and freedom in the town of Easton. But when Elizabeth is badly wounded, Robert must do all he can to keep her alive. He's scared--and confused. He needs help from someone, an adult. But should he turn to the wild woman of the woods? Or can he trust Nathaniel Hill, the friendly man he meets in town?

There's no reasoning with Owen.The island cottage where he and his family have spent the last ten summers must be preserved.And he's going to do it. Never mind that bulldozer stands outside, ready to move in and level the place for a modern hotel. Never mind that summer's over and Owen's family is hurrying to catch the last ferry -- or that school is starting -- or that nobody sees it his way. Alone, fourteen-year-old Owen is going to stay and save the beautiful place others call ugly.

1995 Sometimes I Think I Hear My Name.
Striving to return to New York City in order to confront his parents for the truth about why he was sent to stay with relatives, thirteen-year-old Conrad experiences the strangest week of his life with a girl he hardly knows.

The story presents one day in the life of Jonathan, a thirteen-year-old boy caught up in the Revolutionary War. Jonathan slips away from his family's New Jersey farm in order to take part in a skirmish with the Hessians (German mercenary soldiers hired by the English). Hesets out full of unquestioned hatred for the Hessians, the British, and the Americans who were loyal to the British--the Tories. He hopes for a chance to take part in the glory of battle. "O Lord, he said to himself, make it something grand!"
Avi portrays no grandeur in the war. Jonathan can barely carry his six-foot long musket, and has a worse time trying to understand the talk among the men with whom he marches. The small voluntary group's leader is a crude man who lies to the men and is said to be "overfond of killing." When he is called upon to be a brave soldier, Jonathan's harrowing experience reveals the delusion behind his wish. "The novel makes the war personal and immediate: not history or event, but experience; near and within oneself, and horrible."

A funny contemporary novel about a group of unathletic boys forced by their school to form a soccer team. Opposing the time-honored school ethic that triumph in sports is the American way, the boys form their own opinions about winning at something that means little to them. In a team meeting, they take stock of who they are and why it's so important to everyone else that they should win their games. The narrator, who is the team's captain, sums it up: "Every one of us is good at something. Right? Maybe more than one thing. The point is other things. . . . But I don't like sports. I'm not good at it. I don't enjoy it. So I say, so what? I mean if Saltz here writes a stinko poem--and he does all the time--do they yell at him? When was the last time Mr. Tillman came around and said, `Saltz, I believe in your being a poet!'"With its narrator's deadpan reporting of the fiascos of a consistently losing sports team, S.O.R. Losers does more than make a point--it's funny.

Avi makes a clear statement with his humor in S.O.R. Losers. He once remarked that he sees an irony in the American attitude toward education. "On the one hand, our culture likes to give a lot of lip service to support for kids, but on the other hand, I don't think the culture as a whole likes kids. And kids are caught in this contradiction. I ask teachers at conferences `How many of you have athletic trophies displayed in your schools?' You know how many raise their hands. And I ask, `How many of you have trophy displays for the best reader or writer?' Nobody raises their hands. And I say `What is it therefore that stands as the essential achievement in your school?' With test scores falling, we need to make kids better readers, but instead we're interested in a minority of kids, mostly males, whose primary focus is sports."

1985 Recommended Books for Reluctant Young Adult Readers
(ALA) 2001 ALA Popular Paperback for YAs

Sixteen-year-old John Proud discovers his family's dark secret. In 1854 an ancestral namesake confessed to being a demon.Now John finds himself battling his ancestor who is trying to use John for an evil purpose.

The suspense and occult horror keep readers turning the pages.

Andy Zadinsky combatting human demons

From a reader: "This book is a magnificent book! You never get tired of the outrageous characters. To let you know a little more about Wolf Rider I will give you a quick summary.....There's this boy named Andy who gets a call from someone he does not know, when he answers the phone the caller says,"I killed Nina!" This book tells about how he finds the kiler, and how he will protect Nina. Another struggle he has is that Nina thinks he's crazy. What will he do? Read this book! You will love it."

Peter Saltz is madly in love with Anabell Stackpoole.

From a reader: It was about a boy who was in love with a girl . The boy liked poetry and the girl could never put a book down. The boy's friends think that if he could put on the play Romeo & Juliet his friend would be Romeo and his lover would be Juliet. It worked out as he planned and they got the parts .There is one problem; a bully named Hamilton wanted to be Romeo. They though they had convinced him to be a knight but it was a joke. During the book, Hamilton gets back to the cast of the play and ........ oops sorry you have to read the book to find out the ending. I give the book 4 stars out of 5- stars. "

Avi combined elements of the historical novel, ghost story, and science fiction genres. When the book's main character discovers the ghost of a murdered slave in the historic house his family recently moved into in Providence, Rhode Island, he travels back in time to the days of slave trading. There, the young man uncovers information about the murder and, perhaps more importantly, about the manner in which American history is collectively remembered.

Avi's fictionalized portrait of nineteenth-century writer Edgar Allan Poe, intertwines fiction and history. Avi said he became fascinated with Poe because he was so extraordinary and yet such "a horrible man."
Edmund, has recently immigrated to Providence from England with his aunt and twin sister in order to look for his missing mother. When both aunt and sister disappear, Edmund must elicit help from a stranger-- Edgar Allen Poe. Poe ingeniously finds a trail of clues to the family's disappearance. Edmund, who has been taught to defer to adults, alternates between awe of the great man's perceptive powers and despair at his madness.
Edmund's plight is a harsh one, relying on Poe as the only adult who can help him, while at the same time attempting to ensure that Poe's vision does not become a reality. Readers will be left with puzzles solved and the unease of mysteries remaining.

The story of a thirteen-year-old girl who, as the sole passenger and only female on a transatlantic ship in 1832, becomes involved in a mutiny at sea. Holding her family's aristocratic views on social class and demeanor, Charlotte begins her voyage trusting only Captain Jaggery, whose fine manners and authoritative command remind her of her father. She is thus shocked to find that Jaggery is a viciously brutal shipmaster. This discovery, along with her growing fondness for members of the ship's crew, gradually leads Charlotte to question--and discard--the values of her privileged background. As she exchanges her finishing school wardrobe for a common sailor's garb and joins the crew in its work, she reveals the strength of her character, initially masked by her restrictive upbringing.

The story is about Philip Malloy and his battle with an English teacher, Miss Narwin. Kept off the track team with bad grades in English, Philip repeatedly breaks school rules by humming the national anthem along with the public address system in Miss Narwin's home room. Eventually, the principal suspends Philip from school.
Self-interested members of the community exploit this story of a boy being suspended for his patriotism. Much to everyone's surprise, the incident snowballs into a national media event. The true story is of a good teacher's inability to reach a student, a young man's alienation, a community's disinterest in its children's needs, and a school system's hypocrisy.

In all the national attention Philip receives as a patriotic hero, no one asks him what he feels or thinks, and no one seems to notice that he changes from a fairly happy c youth to a depressed an alienated teen.

Avi once stated: "It's not an accident that in the last decades the book most read by young people is The Outsiders. I wish Stephen King's novels were taught in the schools, so that kids could respond to them and talk about them." Avi does not hesitate to set complexities and harsh truths before his readers because, he noted, these truths are already well-known to children. "I think writers like myself say to kids like this, `We affirm your sense of reality.' "

Set in 1850s Oregon, the story features an intelligent nine-year-old boy named Ben who must return home from boarding school to care for his widowed, invalid father. Ben decides that he wants to fulfill his father's dream of building a barn on their farm. His brother and sister reluctantly agree to help, and after three long months, they finish the barn. That evening, though, their father dies in his sleep, never seeing the barn. While his brother and sister eventually move on, Ben stays on the farm with the memory of his father linked to the barn.

In his 1997 work Avi offers seven stories in which young adults realize the power they hold over their lives, as well as the lives of others. For example, in "What's Inside," a thirteen-year-old boy is able to convince his older cousin not to commit suicide. "Whether facing a domineering mother, divorced parents, or a reputation as the bad guy, the protagonists take positive steps forward," It is each individual's choice of good over bad, "the halo over the pitchfork, that makes these stories inspiring,"

A nervous king, an exasperatingly playful princess, a diabolical count, an oddly ubiquitous kitchen boy, a magician who doesn't believe in magic, and a servant who knows far too much for his own good. When this motley crew embarks on a medieval ghost hunt, destiny throws plenty of twists and turns their way.

Fabrizio, meddlesome but loyal servant of Mangus the ex-magician, feels horribly guilty. Though forbidden to do so, he secretly continues to practice sleights of hand and metaphysics. Casting his tarot cards one stormy night, Fabrizio fears he has unleashed terrible powers that will determine his master's fate. Sure enough, moments later, Mangus and Fabrizio are summoned to the court of the king, who expects Mangus to use his recently outlawed mystical ability to rid his daughter of a ghost that haunts her.

More than anything, Ida Bidson wants to become a teacher. To do that, she needs to finish eighth grade so she can go on to high school. But when the one-room school in Ida's remote Colorado town closes unexpectedly, that dream seems unattainable. Her only hope is to keep the school open without anyone finding out. Yet even a secret school needs a teacher. Ida can't be it. . . . Or can she?

In the spirit of The True Confessions of Charlotte Doyle, two-time Newbery Honor recipient Avi once again has created a compelling story featuring a headstrong and memorable heroine who is determined to take control of her destiny.

A backward and sheltered peasant boy is forced to flee for his life when secrets from his past put him in conflict with the local steward, a vicious man who declares the boy to be a "wolf's head," someone who can be killed without remorse or repercussion. When his mother dies, the boy's sole legacy is a mysterious lead cross, given to him by the local priest and inscribed with words he can't read. With the help of his newfound master and friend "Bear," the boy, who defines himself only as "Asta's son," claims his rightful heritage and strikes a blow for the downtrodden.

Meg and Edward are twins, but they couldn't be more different and they don't get along. She is tall, smart, and pretty, and she has just been invited to joint the High Achievers' Club at her special middle school. He is the world's biggest loser, an immature, runty underachiever. She is terrified her fancy friends will find out about him.

Children become cats and birds, a once-invisible young woman pieces herself back together, and the identity of a mysterious baseball mascot is uncovered--all within this eclectic collection from master storyteller Avi. By turns chilling, ethereal, and surreal, these thought-provoking tales are sure to engage anyone who has ever wondered what it would be like to become someone--or something--else.