Heartwood Tales
What does your company do?
Heartwood Tales is an early childhood emotional intelligence (EQ) program designed to help young children understand, name, and regulate their big emotions - before those feelings become overwhelming or misunderstood.
Through a magical storybook world led by Fenn the Fox and his rainbow-colored friends, we introduce six foundational emotional values: Love, Joy, Peace, Patience, Kindness, and Self-Control. These values come to life through storybooks, play-based activities, and guided emotional learning moments - all while equipping educators and parents with a beautifully crafted and easy-to-implement curriculum.
We’ve seen children referred to psychologists for anger or anxiety, not because they’re “problem kids,” but because they were never taught how to talk about what they feel. Heartwood Tales is designed to change that. And often, it begins to heal the inner child in the grown-ups reading along, too.
What is your biggest success?
Our biggest success has been the overwhelming response from preschool educators who’ve been searching - often desperately - for something just like this.
Fenn and the Heartwood Tales is not just a set of storybooks; it’s launching as a complete emotional intelligence (EQ) program kit for early childhood settings. When we’ve shared early prototypes, educators lit up. They’ve told us how hard it is to find materials that speak to young children in a way that’s emotionally deep, age-appropriate, and truly easy to use.
Their reaction has been my fuel. It’s what has kept me pushing forward - knowing that this isn’t just a passion project, but a needed tool that educators can’t wait to implement. Seeing that emotional connection, that relief, that “finally!”- that’s the biggest win so far.
What has been your biggest hurdle?
One of the biggest hurdles has been taking Heartwood Tales from a heartfelt concept to a fully realized program - something tangible that parents, educators, and children can actually hold, use, and feel empowered by. We’ve deliberately chosen to avoid traditional publishing routes that sometimes ask creators to compromise their vision. Protecting the emotional depth, visual magic, and developmental integrity of Heartwood Tales has meant finding alternative paths to production, often with limited resources.
Looking ahead, a foreseeable challenge will be shifting the wider narrative around emotional education - advocating for the truth that young children can understand and regulate big emotions, if we only give them the tools early enough. Heartwood Tales was created to be that tool.
