Stories by Reg Down

A Tangle of Tales

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.

Eggs for the Hunting

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 Bee Who Lost His Buzz

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.

The Tales of Tiptoes Lightly

Whether you plan to read these sprightly stories to young children, use them as class stories for first grade, or offer them to an intermediate reader as a first chapter book, you and the children in your care are going to love these tales and the gentle characters who people them.

Tiptoes Lightly is a gentle and wise fairy who lives in an acorn high up in the branches of a Great Oak Tree. One morning she finds a note lying on her floor. It says: "Please help! Bee has lost his Buzz!" Thus begins the adventure that takes Tiptoes through the world of nature and into your heart.

The Tales of Tiptoes Lightly comprises three adventures: "The Bee Who Lost His Buzz," "Pumpkin Crow," and "Lucy Goose and the Half-Egg." Sweet and lively illustrations by the author are just one more thing to love about these charming stories.

I read these stories to the children of my class every week for a whole year - they loved them! Their faces shone with obvious delight - I recommend them highly.

- M. Higashine, grades teacher

The Festival of Stones

More adventures of Tiptoes Lightly -- this time with an eye to the festivals of autumn and winter. Tiptoes and her friends journey the realms of nature and spirit, encountering the heart and soul of the festivals along the way. These are just such dear stories -- I can't imagine any young child failing to love them as much as I do.

The festivals Tiptoes illuminates are:

• Michaelmas
• Martinmas
• The Festival of Stones
• The Festival of Plants
• The Festival of Animals
• The Festival of Light
• Christmas

Big-Stamp Two-Toes the Barefoot Giant

Reg Down weaves more Tiptoes magic, this time with a spring theme. In this third book filled with stories that are so lyrical and lovely they practically dance themselves off the page, we join Tiptoes and her friends in Farmer John's garden where bees and plants are awakening in gay abandon. As the book and the season progresses, babies of all sorts are born, kites are flown, more tales are told, sacrifices and rescues are made, and love is called into it all.

These stories are so wonderful for kindergartners and first graders (and their teachers and parents!). Thanks, Reg!

The Magic Knot and Other Tangles

Tiptoes Lightly lives in a lovely little house with just one problem -- there is no furniture! But, that's about to change. Tiptoes will be having a birthday soon, and her dear friends Pine Cone and Pepper Pot the gnomes have determined to make her a table and three chairs, and to find a way to get them to the tippy top of the Great Oak Tree where Tiptoes makes her home. Along the way,they get help from a host of friends and adventures and misadventures abound. In the end, we join Tiptoes at her birthday party where she tells the story of how she came to live in the Great Oak Tree as a daughter of Father Sun and Mother Wind.

Wonderful! Thanks to Reg Down for adding another delightful window into the world of Tiptoes Lightly and her friends.

The Lost Lagoon

Another delightful addition to Reg Down's Tiptoes Lightly series! The Lost Lagoon will keep your children rapt with attention as Tiptoes Lightly and Greenleaf the Sailor make their way through new wonder-filled adventures.

It is spring and Running River is in full flood.  Tiptoes Lightly and Jeremy Mouse visit Greenleaf the Sailor and venture forth in Greenleaf's newly made boat.  Soon they are joined by Pine Cone and Pepper Pot the Gnomes and together they search for the Lost Lagoon the frogs have been so beautifully singing about. 

Meanwhile, back home, Farmer John reads The Adam Tales to Tom Nutcracker and June Berry. Later, Tom rides off in the night until he, too, comes to the Lost Lagoon.  What Happens on this night, with its majestic, rising moon, is filled with a wonder and magic that won't soon be forgotten.

Highly recommended for ages 4 and up!

The Starry Bird

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.

The Cricket and the Shepherd Boy

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.

Sir Gillygad and the Gruesome Egg

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.