The Wizard of Wishes: and Other Tales for Happiness and Wisdom

THE WIZARD OF WISHES plays the “three magical wishes” theme, but with a few strange twists.  Readers (and listeners) may have fun following the rainbow-coded clues.  Could the story have happened?  No, you say?  Don’t be too sure.

THE GOLDEN DEER illustrates the quality of metta, or loving kindness.  This rhymed version is adapted from Ten Jataka Stories, I.B. Horner (Bangkok, 1974).  A prose retelling, “Banyan,” appears in Twenty Jataka Tales, Noor Inayat Khan (Rochester, Vermont, 1975); another, “The Banyan Deer,” in The Hungry Tigress, Rafe Martin (Berkeley, California, 1990).

A LITTLE MAGIC can be read as an old-fashioned fairy tale that takes place in an imaginary land.  But it can also be seen as a subtly inspirational ghost story.  Or even a universal, but Eastern-leaning, spiritual teaching.