Barbara Iverson

The book itself is a slim volume—just 15 pages, each printed only on one side. By Hoffman’s account, he put it together as a Christmas present for his three-year-old son, when no other children’s book would do. (There’s some evidence, as scholar Walter Sauer found, that the book’s generation was less spontaneous and that Hoffman, a doctor, had tried out the stories on his young patients over time.) Hoffman’s book club friends, who had some power in German publishing at the time, encouraged him to release it to the wider public.