Beginning, Middle, and End

Meet Beginning, Middle and End--they are trying to work out who is the most important!

Beginning loves starting stories, but Middle thinks the middle is the most interesting and where the good stuff happens.

Middle doesn't want Beginning to always come first.

A fight ensues--and they wake up End, who disappears as he doesn't like the arguing.

But a book can't exist without the end, so Beginning and Middle set out to find End--and they come to realize how much they need each other--and how you can get the best out of everyone when you work together.

Author: Jon Burgerman
Publisher: Boxer Books
Published: 03/03/2026
Pages: 32
Binding Type: Hardcover
Weight: 1.05lbs
Size: 9.30h x 10.80w x 0.50d
ISBN: 9781454713234
Audience: Ages 4-8


Review Citation(s):
School Library Journal 02/01/2026 pg. 39
Booklist 03/01/2026
Kirkus Reviews 12/15/2025

About the Author

Jon Burgerman is a New York-based British artist whose works have been acquired by prestigious public collections such as London's Victoria and Albert Museum and the OÖ-Kultur Museum in Linz, Austria. His art has been described as "bright, and intuitive, focused on the visceral energy of play as a tenet of communication" (Cate McQuaid, The Boston Globe, July 2021). In recent years he has exhibited at WOAW Gallery (Hong Kong), Chengdu Times Art Museum (China), MISA Art fair Berlin and Cologne, Ojiri Gallery (London), L21 Gallery (Spain), Dopeness Art Lab (Taipei) and Jane Lombard Gallery (New York).

Burgerman's highly distinctive fuzzy-edged characters epitomise the paradoxes of contemporary life. Their seemingly simple googly eyes betray a range of emotional complexities and anxieties, with comically distressed expressions and collapsing forms underlined by titles such as Xanax, Dualist, Lexapro and Chameleon (2022).

Jon Burgerman lives in New York.