Brilliant wordplay. Highly recommended. ( )

What a fun little tale about language and friends. Avon the snail wants to write. Edward the ant is ready to help. Not sure I would burden a kid with the puns and double entendre running rampant in these clever, twisting pages. But I certainly recommend it to all my friends who like writing or reading! Super cute. ( )

whimsical, fun and funny. End of the Beginning the best of these two, but I'm glad the story continues. Amelia Bedelia for grownups. word play fun. ( )

For all writers and readers who muddle through the land mines of language and storytelling. ( )

Thom Barthelmess (Booklist, Jul. 1, 2008 (Vol. 104, No. 21))
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