Claim to Fame: Author Dina Rosenfeld

“I always wanted to write books that would be part of people’s childhood” says Dina Rosenfeld the author of well over a dozen children’s books among them the beloved Yossi and Laibel books and many others.

Like many born writers Dina says she was writing from the time she learned how to form letters and her mother saved everything she ever produced. “I loved that satisfaction of writing in rhyme ” she says the smile evident in her voice.

But writing for herself wasn’t the same as writing for print! When she started teaching preschool over 30 years ago Dina realized there was very little she could read to the kids in her class. “I was teaching Chumash and parshah but I had no storybooks to illustrate the themes I was teaching. I was inspired by all the beautiful secular books I’d seen and I felt Why can’t we do something like that for our kids?”

With this in mind Dina wrote a story about a penny looking for a home following his journeys in the pocket of a boy’s pants before he finally ends up in a tzedakah box a story that she called The Very Best Place for a Penny. Her students loved it and her mother was the one who made her write it down and try to get it published. It wasn’t long before it was accepted for publication. “Illustrated children’s books were a newish idea at the time but the publishers were moving in that direction ” Dina says.