TOOTH FAIRY’S FIRST NIGHT

A resourceful young tooth fairy on her first mission encounters unexpected difficulties in this charmer. Armed with a satchel and a tiny flashlight, little Sally reaches beneath a sleeping child’s pillow and finds, not a tooth, but a note—the first of a series of oblique rhymed clues to the tooth’s hiding place. Depicted as a snub-nosed lass in casual clothes, with a shock of blonde hair and big, transparent dragonfly wings, Sally makes an appealing figure in Berkeley’s watercolor close-ups, moving from dismay to determination, and flitting from clue to clue with a purposeful air. Recalling her profession’s guiding principles: Be patient, Look on the bright side, and Always get your tooth, Sally solves each riddle in turn, and retrieves the tooth at last—leaving a note of her own beneath the pillow, with a clue to where she’s hidden the unspecified “surprise.” A natural companion for Betsy Jay’s view from the other side of the encounter, Jane vs. the Tooth Fairy (2000). (Picture book. 6-8)