The author's father unfortunately passed away when he and his brother were very young. Having a fatherless childhood in an environment where toughness was in vogue, part of his moral and social upbringing was influenced by the grade school book he bought and kept. It helped teach him how to think through daily occurrences that he encountered. Kindness to others, a repeated theme in the book, must have been a lesson he learned well, for his daughter's childhood memories include a "Tata" (Daddy) who, more often than not, invited other children, whose parents were unavailable to do so, along on family outings to the beach, cider mill, etc.
Ed Kwiatkowski decided to translate his Polish grade school book for children growing up too soon and not having a chance to be children, in the hope that it would give them a moral and social structure in our blas society. This book would have them separate right from wrong. It would give them a stopping point in their lives to think about their behavior, as the author once did, to deal with questionable actions around them, while also being entertained.