Leon Forer, a school teacher on the Lower East Side of Manhattan, spent the long subway home after work turning his daughter's favorite fairy tales into poems. He read the poem to her when he got home.
First he did Cinderella, her favorite fairy tale. Then Snow White her other favorite.
But the third one he did was Rumpelstiltskin because it was the one he liked best. He had fun writing this dramatic poem.
His daughter never forgot how much she had loved them as a kid. And always believed other children would enjoy them too.
Her introduction to the three fairy tales tells the story of how her dad wrote them on the subway and what it was like to be a little girl in New York City back then.
She calls her introduction, When I Was Just Your Age, and your child will like hearing that read aloud to her too.
Parents will enjoy reading them to their child. They are very New York City. And they are fun.
About the Author: Leon Forer, a lifelong New Yorker, was school teacher at Seward Park high school on Lower East Side of Manhattan.
He taught bookkeeping, accounting, commercial law.
But his passion always was for literature.
He was a great teacher and loved by his students. Back then his students were Italian, Puerto Rican, Chinese, Jewish, etc. And all of them took off on every religious holiday.
Leon was an athlete, he loved tennis and ice skating. As a youth he was in an amateur theater group.
And had lifelong love for going to the theater, to ballet, and concerts at Carnegie. Mozart and Beethoven were his favorite composers.
He wrote poetry as a hobby to express himself, and did photography his whole life, always of people. He had talent for composition.
He met and married Marion Kushelevsky who had come from Rochester NY to go to nursing school in Manhattan.
After their second child was born, they needed a bigger apartment. They moved to Electchester, in Flushing Queens.
Where he played tennis every day in Kissena Park. Doubles with his wife. Singles with his friends. He was a great tennis player and had a beautiful backhand.
