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From one of our favorite children’s authors comes another collection sure to delight.  A Tangle of Tales is packed cover to cover with 42 stories for children.  Inside you’ll find nature tales, riddle tales, fables, fairy tales, poems, and creation myths both serious and sanguine.

A joy for children from kindergarten through grade 4.

Meet Thor, Baldur, Freya, Odin and all the higher gods – and Loki too, mischief maker and clever deceiver. Filled with the most extraordinary tales of great depth, imagination and wisdom it is impossible to resist this wonderful book – and Colum’s telling is outstanding. Filled with drama, intrigue, humor and adventure, this collection of tales begins with the building of Asgard, home of the gods, and ends with the final battle of Ragnarok when the world is deluged i water and made anew.

In between we meet Iduna and her golden apples, Freya of the ill-gotten necklace, Odin the Wanderer, Sigurd the Dragon Slayer, the mischievous, clever but vindictive Loki, and the whole Norse pantheon from giants to dwarves.  For richness, cultural wealth and sheer grandeur, the Norse myths stand alone and unique in the world.

This edition has been given a new cover by Reg Down and the type has been reset, making this edition much more readable than previous editions.

The content of The Children of Odin is identical to that of Nordic Gods and Heros.

This is a gem of a book by the renowned poet, dramatist, novelist, folklorist and storyteller, Padraic Colum.  No less than three of his books for children received retrospective citations for the Newbery Honor.  Filled with drama, action, tenderness and adventure, Padraic Colum spins a series of tales which draw us into a world of imagination and beauty.  The tales have a strong and clear storyteller’s voice which is still as alive, fresh and direct as it was when first spoken.

This edition has been edited by the artist, teacher and author, Reg Down, with grade 4 to 8 students in mind.  In addition to editing for clarity and pronounceability (Celtic spellings are sometimes impossible!), he refreshed the original illustrations by Dugard Stewart Walker, inserted footnotes where a word was uncommon or seldom used, added a map to show where countries and mountains mentioned in the book are located, added a section with characterizations and drawings of all the birds which appear in the book, included the Celtic Ogham alphabet referenced in one tale (plus examples for the reader to deciher and encouragement for them to write their own Ogham), and finally, added a brief biography of Padraic Colum, with a description of his dramatic life and times in Ireland and his arrival in the land of hope, America.

Outstanding! Highly recommend for ages 9 and older.

Sir Gillygad is a knight, a doughty knight who rides about on his trusty frog called Gorf.  They sally forth on adventures bold and exciting: to the Twinkle, to Holey Hill, to the Plain of Dreams – even as far as World’s End.  The rumors are heard, rumors of an egg, a Gruesome Egg with two leggs, a left leg and a right leg, and the leggs are bird’s leggs – which makes sense in an eggy sort of way.  The egg is haunting the Daark Foreset, close to teh Mumbly Mews and the gerwine Greneff.  So off Sir Gillygad gallops (well, hoppedy-hops), there to meet and confront this unique and remarkable beast.

Sir Gillygad and the Gruesome Egg is an adventuresome tale, suitable for children aged 9 to 12 or thereabouts – and adults, too, if they are still young at heart and open to the wonders that speak of the mystery of becoming.

Spring is full of life and life is full of eggs, all sorts of eggs: great cosmic eggs and tiny butterfly eggs, salmon eggs and bird eggs, rabbit eggs and special eggs being gilded and painted by two gnomes called Pine Cone and Pepper Pot. They have been told (gossiped, to be correct) that Farmer John’s children, Tom and June, are going to give them special eggs for Easter, and they decide to reciprocate. However, if you are a gnome, a small gnome—even if you are two small gnomes—then the simplest of tasks (such as finding a bird who does not mind giving you a couple of their eggs) can be a problem … !!!

Woven into the fabric of the book are many tales, myths and legends: Pepper Pot reads the history of King Karnac and the Turning of Time, Madam Two-Pecks tells her chicks how the universe was created from the World Egg, and the Wise Salmon in Running River tells the fingerlings about the great cycle, the Egg of Life. ‘Eggs for the Hunting’ is a spring tale, a wonder tale, affirming the joy, humor and mystery of life.

Another joyous, delicious story by Reg Down for children of all ages!  Very highly recommended.

The Fetching of Spring is a joyful, heartbreaking, action packed, contemplative, funny, whimsical, uplifting, and deeply serious fairy tale for grown ups by an author who has delighted children for years.

Much of the charm of this tale lies in the comedic tension between its fleet-footed telling, and the perilous quest of its stumbling hero. Its joy, on the other hand, is found in the author’s clear-eyed assessment of our modern condition and the demands it places on us for survival as human beings. That he couches all this so beautifully within the conventions of a classic fairy tale is nothing less than sublime.

Our story opens in a kingdom where there is just the right amount of corruption to render all those not wielding ill-gotten power either grouchy or very sleepy. Add to this the fact that the Golden Bird, the heart of the kingdom and source of its joy and prosperity, has been stolen (or so the king says) and our adventure begins.  In order to appease his subjects, the king declares that someone must find and bring back the Golden Bird. He chooses the sleepiest person for the task, Tik-Tak, the baker’s son, equips him with a steed no one else wants, gives him a dull and rusty sword, and sends him off to do the good deed.

What follows is a masterful quest story that takes our hero (and thereby ourselves) from a cozy place by the fire and places him, often dazed and misguided, on the path to rescue the Golden Bird. Tik-Tak’s travels take him into two neighboring kingdoms, once joyous but now bereft, through the land of Erce-Ma (you have to meet her to understand), and out into the desert where he happens upon a much better steed. From there his path leads downward, and he bumbles his way into the realms of un-humanness that, simply put, are nearly unbearable to witness (though we all see them everyday). But from there Tik-Tak meets with success by finding the Golden Bird and begins the perilous climb upward. Finally, he restores all that was lost in the three upper kingdoms and finds both purpose and true happiness for himself.

The Fetching of Spring is wonderful reading of the very best sort: a story strong and true, told with joy and wonder, clarity and hope. This one is not to be missed.

Reg Down has gifted us with a happy Easter tale featuring Tiptoes Lightly and her friends. Told with humor and joy, this is just right for today’s children.  It’s pretty wonderful for today’s adults, too. 

One morning an egg appears in the meadow below the Great Oak Tree. Neither Jeremy Mouse nor the fairy Tiptoes Lightly have ever seen such a huge egg – over a foot tall! They go to Farmer John’s in search of an answer, but without any luck, and when they return the egg has grown!

Thus begins an adventure which involves most everybody on the farm – human, animal and sprite. The egg, later hidden deep in the forest, keeps growing and finally hatches in a beautiful way on Easter Sunday.

The Starry Bird is an Easter tale with healthy doses of humor, adventure, and just plain fun. But underneath, in a form suitable for children, run the mystery-questions of life, death and resurrection that lie at the heart of Easter.

Reg Down’s Color and Gesture is a monumental work that explores in depth and with beauty the inner life of color as expressed through eurythmy and Rudolf Steiner’s spiritual vision.  What appears is a world of incredible richness, depth and beauty in the most common, unlikely and unexpected of places: that of gesture.  Gesture reveals the human soul, and the fabric of the soul is color; as a result, we find that the souls’ infinite expressiveness, with all its goodness, pathos, waywardness and humor, is intimately woven through with color experiences.

When we approach gesture via color, we discover whole gesture families, with, at times, the most unforeseen of bedfellows.  We gain new insights into soul gestures, acting gestures, animal, planetary and zodiac gestures.  The underlying eurythmic gestures of speech and music are also explored, and we learn to expreience how the color chords and underlying gesure are themselves a structured, musically-ordered language.

When we approach color via gesture, we find inner laws, relationships and dynamics that allow us to gain, via artistic activity, not only a deeper understanding of color as a whole, but also a conscious foothold in the astral and etheric worlds.

~ from the author’s description with additions of my own – this is an amazing book!

Those of you who have read The Tale of Tiptoes Lightly no doubt remember the story of “The Bee Who Lost His Buzz” very well.  It is, in fact, the first of Tiptoes Lightly’s many delightful adventures.  In it, Tiptoes and Jeremy Mouse help the Bee whose buzz has been snagged by grumpy Mr. Cactus, the Worm who’slost his squirm and cannot wiggle back into the safety of his home.  They go on to sail down to the sea to untangle little Octopus who is too young to count properly (he can only count to seven), and gets his legs hopelessly mixed up whenever he tries.

Now, Reg Down has created a sumptuously illustrated storybook that brings Tiptoes’ first adventure to life in ways glorious to behold.  I can’t imagine a child who wouldn’t revel in the images and characters of this storybook.  A perfect gift any time of the year.  I just love it.

Ages 3-6 and onward.

Who but Reg Down could bring us a new Christmas story that glows with such warmth and beauty?  The Cricket and the Shepherd Boy  is a gift for the Season of Love.  The author’s paintings filling each page evoke a wholesome joy that resonnates in wonderful ways with the story itself.  I can tell as I hold this book that it will carry its message and its warmth far – families throughout the world will mark the Christmas season by taking it off the shelf and reading it each year.  And then it will live on in the hearts of the children and adults who hear it.  The Cricket and the Shepherd Boy is a treasure.

The story:  

A young shepherd hears a cricket singing at his feet. The cricket speaks to him and foretells that the coming winter will be both special and especially cold. Then he disappears back into the grass.

The winter is indeed especially harsh, but on a star-studded night the cricket and the shepherd boy make their way to a manger huddled low between two hills. There they find a mother and father with a child who radiates light and warmth into the world.

This innocent and warmhearted nativity tale is intended for parents to read to their children at Christmas time. While the story itself is timeless, this tale is most suitable for children from preschool to grade four or five.