How to Trick the Tooth Fairy

March 5, 2018
Russell, coauthor (with her mother, Rachel Renée Russell) of the Dork Diaries series, introduces Kaylee, a prankster who is “always looking for her next unsuspecting victim.” (Readers may find some of her tricks mean-spirited, as when she feeds friends cookies with “dog toothpaste” in place of frosting.) The pranking field is leveled when Kaylee leaves the Tooth Fairy a toy frog instead of her tooth—and the fairy retaliates by conjuring a bevy of real frogs. After Kaylee serves the fairy a piece of pie topped with hot sauce, things get messier: ice cream flies through the air, and cats and dogs rain from the ceiling. A familiar-sounding narrative motif (“Now, if you prank the Tooth Fairy with prankster pie, she’ll top it with...”) strikes a derivative chord, but Rolli (Claudia & Moth) humorously amplifies the escalating chaos in digitally enhanced, candy-hued watercolors. On one amusing spread, the tricksters gaze quizzically at each other, the fairy with candy sprinkles in her pink locks and Kaylee with a banana peel crowning her unruly tresses. Ages 4–8.