UNDER MY PILLOW

In Ballow’s debut picture book, a young girl loses her first tooth but doesn’t receive anything from the Tooth Fairy.

Sam, who has light brown skin and curly brown hair, loses her first tooth while chewing on crunchy cereal. She leaves it under her pillow, but in the morning is distraught to find the tooth gone and nothing left in exchange. Sam writes to the Tooth Fairy to ask for an explanation. The Tooth Fairy comes personally to investigate, riding her magical bird Gordy. Sam, her mother, and the Tooth Fairy search the house. Gordy pecks around outside, and in doing so gives himself away—he was the one who took the tooth and the gift, burying them as a joke. Realizing that this wasn’t funny, he apologies to Sam, who forgives him. Ballow employs straightforward prose, presented primarily against white backdrops kept separate from the illustrations. The story’s main plot point serves both as a lesson in coping with disappointment and as the basis for parent/child discussions about what sort of jokes are amusing versus those that are cruel (“Next time, let’s play a game we all think is funny”). Throughout, Sheikh brightens the proceedings with lush, cloudy, pastel-colored digital illustrations that capture Sam’s happy home environment. Though the characters’ sizes and skin tones are not always consistent, the images will hold younger kids’ interest as the narrative unfolds.

A simple, wholesome little adventure for young readers.