Customer Reviews

The Festival of Stones: Autumn and Winter Tales of Tiptoes Lightly

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This book was recommended to my children by a Waldorf family. My 6 year old has read all four of Reg's books and she would love even more. My 3 year old is in his first of the four books and he is begging for a new chapter each day. You don't have to have your children at a Waldorf school to enjoy the fairies, gnomes, and friendly creatures that capture a child's imagination.

We love Tiptoes and her friends! Great book! I would recommend this for 6-9 year olds. No scary stuff, just nice story chapters!

If you are a parent of children in the 4 - 8 year old range or if you are a kindergarten or 1st grade teacher, get this and ALL Tiptoes story books by Reg Down. They are truly magical, beautifully written, and have are perfect for gently bringing the rhythm of nature into the young child's consciousness. I told these stories all last year to a Waldorf 1st grade class and they LOVED them! This year I am teaching my own 1st grade and these stories will be part of the curriculum. The collection of stories are like chapters but each story can be read on its own and they are relatively short - so perfect for bedtime, too.
Thank you to Reg Down for his brilliant collection of stories!

These are lovely little stories with a few black and white drawings> I think that makes it good for a bedtime story because they can just lay and listen and not want to keep looking at the pictures.

My 10 year old loves this book~now she reads it herself. Before I would read it to her before bed. Great book! Helps their imaginations flourish!

Starting in the fall, we read one of these chapters each night before bed. The girls ALWAYS beg for more but we find patience and wait for the next night. The stories walk us through the darkening of fall, Michaelmas celebration, Halloween all the way through Christmas. Short sweet stories that children so easily relate to. This was our first Tiptoes book...we were hooked! Now we have them all!

This is our second Tiptoes book and the second in the delightful series of magical tales by Reg Down about the little fairy named Tiptoes Lightly. In Festival of Stones, we follow the continuing adventures of Tiptoes and her animal, human and gnome companions through the fall and winter, including the many festivals of these seasons: Michaelmas, Halloween, Martinmas, Advent and Christmas. Although my children (4 and 6) attend a Waldorf school and it deepens their understanding of these festivals, the book is more than accessible to any preschool to early grade school child who loves stories about forest friends and celebrations. The lovely line illustrations are the perfect compliment to this chapter book. We usually read two chapters a night, often with a request for "just one more." The plot is easy to follow but varying enough to hold their attention night after night. We love this book and plan to revisit it year after year.

This book is thoughtfully written for Waldorf and non Waldorf educated families. The characters come to life in the stories, and my daughter loves acting out their adventures, when she is playing outside. She especially loves Pine Cone and Pepper Pot and can't wait to see what will happen to them next! My daughter and I have so enjoyed our "before bed reading time" of all the Tiptoes Lightly stories. They are perfect read aloud stories that any parent and child will enjoy together.

We are so happy to read this book! Tiptoes Lightly is our favorite fairy and my daughter was falling asleep curled as Jeremy Mouse for many nights! This book brought us more beautiful stories from our well-loved world of Tiptoes. Reading them while celebrating the very same festivals brings another dimension to the stories.
But I just have to warn you about something!!! My daughter, who is almost 5, started making her own stories based on the one we have read. She also acts most of them - so our bedtime "routine" is much, much longer now :)

As a Waldorf teacher, in first grade the children often ask me to tell them a story whenever we have a few minutes to spare or when they finish their work early. The Tiptoes Lightly series of books is perfect for those times when I just need a short tale to tell and don't have time to read from a longer chapter book or tell a tale from memory. Although written in chapters with a loose storyline holding them together, many of the chapters in the Festival of the Stones work well as stand-alone tales to read around the various fall and winter festivals - Michaelmas, Halloween, Martinmas, Advent and Christmas. The other chapters continue, through short vignettes of daily life, to develop the characters the children have come to know and love from the Tiptoes Lightly book.

What I particularly like about these stories are the verses, poems and songs interspersed throughout the stories. As I listen to my students playing around with rhymes as they develop their language skills for reading and writing, I love to bring them stories that help not only to awaken their imagination through descriptive stories, but also to awaken their love of sounds in verse and rhyme. Unlike stories written completely in rhyme, which seem to put the children to sleep, these have just the right amount that truly awakens them to the richness of language and its power. What a wonderful way to bathe these emerging readers in symphony of sounds and images!