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Welcome to Tiptoes Lightly's website ~
Kid's Books Sold: 18,754 and counting - thank you, Readers!
~ In the News ~
I have done a bit of spring cleaning on the home page and it now only carries currently active items from the last 6 months (more or less). :)
NEXT LUCY GOOSE PUPPET SHOW: Camellia Waldorf School, Saturday, May 19, at 11 am, in the eurythmy room. Come one, come all. Suitable for kindergarten and grade 1. Entrance is free, exit by tip. Click here for directions. See you there! Come on time!!!
May 2012: I have posted a short story, The Coconut Tale, on the story page. It is one of those not-quite-classifiable tales with respect to type and age-group. Grade 2 or 3 and up to adults would be my guess.
May 2012: I've posted a small album of the Lucy Goose puppet show at Rudolf Steiner College. It was perfect weather and the music room was filled and the children were smiling. Thank you all for coming and thank you to Osiris for initiating and hosting the event. The photos are by Shani Young - thanks Shani.
April: I've posted an album of a Lucy Goose and the Half-egg puppet show at Live Oak Waldorf School on 28 April. A lovely time was had by all! It really was a most pleasant event at perhaps the most beautiful and child appropriate campus in the USA (me thinks) :)
Most of the photographs are by Jennifer Kovach - thank you!
As you can see, Pine Cone and Pepper Pot came disguised as two grown-up human beings pretending to be Pine Cone and Pepper Pot (how devious is that!!!). One of them even went so far as pretending to be a woman! They almost had us fooled but you can tell by their cheeky looks that they are really gnomes.
Saturday, May 12 at 10.30am ~ at Rudolf Steiner College in Sunny Fair Oaks, California.
Saturday May 19 at 11.00am ~ Camellia Waldorf School in Sacramento, California
a puppet show starring Tiptoes, Jeremy Mouse and the Earth Princess
and, of course,
LUCY GOOSE AND THE HALF-EGG
Suitable for kindergarten through grade 1 or 2 (or older if your child likes the performing arts).
See you there!
NOW AVAILABLE! Sir Gillygad and the Gruesome Egg
Sir Gillygad is a knight, a doughy knight who rides about on his trusty frog called Gorf. They venture forth on adventures bold and exciting: to the Twinkle, to Holey Hill, to the Plain of Dreams—even as far as World's End. Then rumors are heard, rumors of an egg, a Gruesome Egg, with two leggs, a left leg and a right leg, and the leggs were bird’s leggs—which makes sense in an eggy sort of way. It is haunting the Daark Forest close to the 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 still are young at heart and open to the wonders that speak to the mystery of life and becoming.
59 illustrations + 23 capitals, 6x9 format, soft cover, 168 pages, $16.50. Purchase book
May 8: Available on Amazon as of today ~ Padraic Colum’s magical set of tales: The Boy who Knew what the Birds said.
TEACHERS~SCHOOLS~VENDORS: INTERESTED IN THIS BOOK? Let me know via my Pied Piper Press contact page. Page count is 158 and retail price is $16.50. Discounts for wholesale and bulk orders apply.
April 2012: Sara of Love in the Suburbs did a neat wooden Easter egg painting with Tiptoes and the Great Oak Tree. Go check out what she's been up to!
Eggs for the Hunting had a great selling run up to Easter - going like hotcakes it was. Thanks to everyone who bought a copy - I hope you enjoyed it.
Eggs for the Hunting
starring Pine Cone and Pepper Pot and the illimitable Tiptoes Lightly
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.
Suitable for kindergarten through grade 3 or 4. Soft cover, 108 pgs, $14.95 Purchase Book
A triplet of reviews: "Perfect spring tale for all ages: I fell in love with these books instantly, as did my 5 children. I think this one captures the innocence of spring and Easter beautifully. My children begged for more and I ended up reading this book in only two nights. It would make a wonderful gift in the Easter basket!" Kelly - Amazon Review
"If you aren't a Tiptoes fan yet, "Eggs for the Hunting," the seventh book in the Tiptoes Tales, is a great place to start. It's a wonderful book for young children, highly imaginative and utterly entertaining." David Kennedy Waldorf Today
"Eggs for the Hunting" is an entertaining twist for younger readers, very much recommended." Midwest Book Review
A novel for grown-ups (14 and older) - now available on Amazon, Bob and Nancy's Bookshop, A Toy Garden, Rudolf Steiner College Bookstore, Powell's Books, Barnes and Noble, Ginger and Pickles in Boulder, Colorado. While the big stores carry the book, ordering it from a small vendor is encouraged - thank you.
The Golden Bird has been stolen (apparently) and Tik-Tak is sent to fetch it. The naive and dreamy youth rides southwards (it’s warmer in that direction), gets kicked out of two kingdoms, meets Erce-Ma, loses his hopeless steed, gains a (much) better one, stumbles into the Undwelling and its townships, descends into Akkman’s Dwell, rescues the bird (and other abductees), returns (still not fully awake) with the bird, refuses the hand of the Princess (what!), becomes a successful entrepreneur, is jailed > is released > then steals the bird (wrong order, I know, but that’s the truth), returns to Spring, returns to Tansa, gets familied, assumes the kingship and unites the Three Kingdoms (well, it’s a work in progress).
The Fetching of Spring, written with a (sometimes) humorous nod to the fairy tale, has a deadly serious subtext. It is an awakening tale, the story all of us are in whether we like it or not. Setting out from the Kingdom of the Golden Bird our (inordinately) nascent hero descends via the earthly into contemporary sub-earthly realms. The story (and it is a story in the sense of storytelling) ends with worn-shoe idealism and a peppering of satire to spice things up. $16.50, 248 pages, 5.5 x 8.5, soft cover. Purchase Book
REVIEWS: "The Fetching of Spring is a joyful, heartbreaking, action packed, contemplative, funny, whimsical, uplifting and deeply serious fairy tale for grown-ups. It 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." Nancy Parsons, Waldorf Books
"A journey is nothing without misadventure. The Fetching of Spring is a humorous spin on the fairy tale from Reg Down, following young Tik-Tak as he is sent off to recover the Golden Bird, and ends up seemingly doing everything but. A story of a young one with good intentions perhaps ending up doing more good than he ever thought he could, The Fetching of Spring is an excellent pick for anyone looking for a fun take on the fairy tale fantasy." Midwest Book Review
"A grail story for our times. This is both a delightful and serious story for the times we live in. There lives in this story pictures we can all live into; the young Fool, leaving home, naively setting forth in quest of a Golden Bird. It is the story of the journey from innocence, to struggle and then the return home with a renewed consciousness of maturity. Take this book into your home and into your heart; a delightful fairy tale for adults! it is truly a Grail story for our times." Amazon Review
Upcoming: a "very good review" (so says the editor) in the summer edition of Lilipoh Magazine. I have not seen it myself - looking forward to it.
Color and Gesture ~ the inner life of color
The second, revised and updated edition of Color and Gesture has been published and is now available on Amazon. It has a supplementary chapter in which all amendments and additions are found—see the Color and Gesture tab on the right for a PDF download for those who already have the first edition. In addition to supplementary material, the second edition contains a number of new eurythmy, tone and acting figures.
Also under the Color and Gesture tab you will find a review by Therese Schroeder-Sheker, founder and academic dean of the School of Music-Thanatology, Chalice of Repose Project. This review will appear in the Zoe, the journal for music-thanatology and contemplative musicianship, Coherence, a professional journal for music therapists, the newsletter of the Eurythmy Association of North America and the Eurythmy Association of Great Britain and Ireland.
550 pages, 8.5x11 format, soft cover, $38.50 Purchase book
April 2012: Thanks to This Cozy Life blog for a sweet review. :) Go on over and check out her site, it's nicely done and she writes well.
March 2012: I have taken on 4 children's titles from Whole Spirit Press:
The Last little Cat - by Meindert Dejong (a wonderful little tale for kindergarten through grade 2 - often used as a reader for grade 2).
Sticks across the Chimney ~ a story of Denmark by Nora Burglon (I gave it a new cover and it is now available on Amazon).
The Gate swings in ~ a story of Sweden - by Nora Burglon
The Boy apprenticed to an Enchanter - Padraic Colum (a great adventure for grade 5 or 6)
I have set up a new website called Pied Piper Press to sell these and my books to private and public schools - plus homeschoolers and individuals if they want to purchase through me. I will be adding new titles over time. Check out this new venture - click Book Sales on the top bar or here ~ thanks.
March 22, 2012: I have posted a retelling of The Turnip Princess on the stories page and on the journal. It is a recently released tale from an archive in Regensburg, Germany. It was collected by the historian Franz Xaver von Schoenwerth (1810-1886) in the Bavarian region of Overpfalz over 150 years ago. It was published in the Guardian newspaper in England in spring 2012. The original tale was, to my mind, rough and fragmentary, and difficult to read. It hardly seemed to hang together as a story, being more a synopsis than a told tale. Yet the images it presented were strong and powerful. They spoke, to my mind, of the interconnections between consciousness, the body and the senses. I rewrote the tale (in a style suitable for reading to children) as a way to deepen my connection to the images.
Sir Gillygad falls off Gorf.
March 2012: Drawings from the new book for grade 3 to 6 (and those young at heart who like a good tale)
SIR GILLYGAD AND THE GRUESOME EGG
News break, October 2011: Jeremy Mouse at Occupy Wall Street!
We have an album of reader's art, craft and costumes connected to Tiptoes and Crew. If you have any items please take a photo and send to me - thanks!
"Beauty will save the world." Dostoevsky
"Yes!" Reg Down