“The idea of turning to a fable was given to me by one of the oldest and most remarkable masters of Russian literature, A. N. Tolstoy. Having once read my new poems for children, he said: “Those poems of yours, in which you come from folklore, from folk humor, are the ones that work best for you... Try writing fables.” Some time later I wrote my first fable.A. N. Tolstoy liked the fable. I wrote a few more. One of them was published by the newspaper Pravda. It was the fable "The Fox and the Beaver". Then “Hare in Hop”, “Two Girlfriends”, “Forward-Sighted Magpie” and others appeared...”