The Tooth Fairy

The Tooth Fairy by Peter Collington reviewed by Publishers Weekly
Picture-book collectors and parents of preschoolers will surely want to find a space on their bookshelves for this splendid work. As in Collington's The Angel and the Soldier Boy and On Christmas Eve, exquisite, minutely detailed art relays a wordless story. When a girl loses a tooth at bedtime, she places it in a tiny "tooth box" that she slides under her pillow. Soon a tiny fairy wearing an ethereal white dress and a crown of roses flies from her home within the trunk of a tree to a trap door hidden in the forest floor. It leads to a cavernous mine, where-using a large furnace to melt the metal and a mold to shape it-she fashions a silver coin. At last the fairy enters the girl's room, retrieves the small box and exchanges the coin for the tooth. Readers of all ages will be delighted to learn exactly what this dedicated fairy does with the newly fetched tooth in the inventive, heartwarming conclusion. Somewhat out of sync with the elegant feel of the book, the final page contains a tooth box and coin to be cut out and assembled.

The Tooth Fairy has visited my home many times in the past year. This delightful story was looked at again and again by my girls. They even tried to fool our Tooth Fairy with tic-tacs to see if they could get coins. My oldest daughter was a bit confused by the piano keys though. She always thought the tooth fairy made her teeth into teeth for babies so they could be used again and again (I think that idea came from another book). I easily warded off the confusion though by reminding her there are several tooth fairies and they may all do the job differently. This book is a must for an elementary library, and will be especially loved by younger girls.