Date of birth: 23 December 1937
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Avi (Wortis) was born in New York City on December 23, 1937. He has master's degrees from the University of Wisconsin and Columbia University. From 1962 to 1970 he was a librarian in the theater collection of the New York Public Library and is presently a humanities librarian at Trenton State College in New Jersey. Avi is divorced from Joan Gabriner, whom he married in 1963, and has two sons, Shaun and Kevin.
Avi's (Pronounced AH-vee) novels for middle-grade children are careful ones and the ones for which he is best-known. With richly recorded and researched details, they require attentive and careful reading to uncover their full meaning and their implications. His are not easy novels. They are tense, are full of excitement, and bring fictionalized history to life in a way that causes it to remain in the memory.
His interest in storytelling and in American history perhaps stems from his own family. Avi is a second-generation American, not all that far removed from his family's Western European origins and traditions. As with many second-generation children, Avi was raised with an undivided bias for the "new" country with all its promise while maintaining a close tie with the "old" country and its colorful and meaningful past. In these families a sense of the past is paramount: a sense of family is a sense of self. That sense is very often transmitted through storytelling.
Avi is a thoughtful speaker in that he will question questions, seeking clarity before answering.
(Adapted from *Jim Rigoski's Between The Covers*)

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