Anthony Stefano

Born in Italy in 1948, I was orphaned a few years after my birth and taken as an orphan to Greece. Then, I was adopted and brought to the United States from Greece in 1958. I went to school in NYC until I started to work in 1967. From 1967 to 1981, I worked at various occupations in N.Y.C. In 1981, my wife and I opened a furniture antique store called Kantiques, located in Hoboken, N.J. We ran it until 1991. In 1986, we added a women’s vintage antique clothing, jewellery and accessories store called Tiger Lilly’s, next door to Kantiques. My current occupation is proprietor of a service business.

As a child, I experienced life with a certain way of looking at things which, as others put it, was not exactly normal or ordinary. I had a need to express my thoughts and describe my adventures to people through stories about my past and at times through stories made up of fictional thoughts. I was almost always told that I should write down my ideas. When I did, I thought of how I could help people to see life in the way that I did, which was positive and happy and by extension, to see how I could help them cope with life, adjust to life and survive.

Yes, many people thought that I was a happy go lucky idiot, but to me how I thought was just a way to keep my smile and bury my pains.

So, if only I could ease the pains of others with laughter, I believed that I could change the world. I started as a teen but without a real education. I could not spell and no one could understand, let alone decipher what I wrote. Through the years, I believed that for some reason I would learn how to write but I did not believe that I would become a writer. It was not until recently that I realised that if I were to become a writer, I could help people, especially children, look at life in a better, more positive and productive way.

It’s a long story but the destruction of my education in the third grade was due to my treatment by a teacher. Now, it is a teacher and professor who has put me back on the track to education, in order for me to begin what was ended at the age of nine. It is now time for me to give to others what I hope will fill their imagination and bring about many smiles.

My childhood dreams mostly consisted of flying, which created a world of fantasies. My imagination allowed me to temporarily escape the “Now”. Because of this imagination, I would be able to create characters and stories that could give joy to others. There were times when I would look to the sky and beg whatever powers existed and myself, to never lose or forget the importance of an imagination. This is the reason I wrote this book…for children to maintain their imagination for as long as they could.