How to Trick the Tooth Fairy by Erin Danielle Russell

Hey, Story Seekers!

Losing a tooth used to be simple.

Tooth goes under pillow. Tooth Fairy shows up. Money appears. Everybody sleeps.

Kaylee has looked at this perfectly functional system and thought:

Needs frogs.

We're exploring How to Trick the Tooth Fairy, written by Erin Danielle Russell and illustrated by Jennifer Hansen Rolli. Russell is a coauthor of the New York Times bestselling Dork Diaries series, which tells you roughly what altitude the mischief operates at.

Readit has a question.

"I don't have teeth."

True.

"So what does the Tooth Fairy bring worms?"

Let's not destabilize the dental economy before the review starts.

Book Breakdown

Kaylee loves pranks. Not occasionally. This is a lifestyle.

Water balloons. Masks. Tricks on her sister. She has pranked Santa Claus.

But Kaylee is only a prank princess in training. The reigning Princess of Pranks is the Tooth Fairy.

So when Kaylee loses a tooth, she sees her opening. The Tooth Fairy reaches under the pillow expecting the usual transaction and finds a fake frog.

Nice try.

The Tooth Fairy responds with real frogs.

Now we have a war.

The two escalate from there. Food flies. Water sprays. The mess compounds until it's completely out of hand and both of them have to deal with what they've made. They clean up together, share some fairy-dust cookies, and agree there's room for two prank princesses.

Jennifer Hansen Rolli is doing good work here. Kaylee has big curly hair and a face built entirely for plotting. The Tooth Fairy arrives with pink hair and an expression that makes clear she did not fly in merely to conduct a tooth-for-cash exchange.

Rolli keeps the palette restrained with pops of pink and glitter, which is a smart call. The prank war gets messy. The pictures don't have to.

For teachers and librarians: Lexile AD570L (adult directed, so it's built for reading aloud) · ATOS 2.5 · 353 words · 0.5 AR points. Aladdin, May 1, 2018. Forty pages, ages 4 to 8, grades P to 3.

No AR quiz number and no Guided Reading level here. The only F&P figure I found was labeled as an estimate by its own source, and an estimate isn't a reading level.

Jungle Jimmy's Journal

Nine million views on the KidTime read-aloud got my attention. So did a Goodreads score of 3.58, which is low.

Those two numbers are the whole story of this book, and I spent a while working out why they disagree.

The hook is undeniable. Can a kid out-prank the Tooth Fairy? No setup required. Every child understands the stakes instantly, and when the fake frog turns into real frogs you have escalation, which is the engine every comic premise needs.

I also like that Kaylee finally meets somebody who can give it back. A prankster who always wins gets dull fast. Kaylee needs an opponent, and watching two ridiculous people recognize each other is genuinely fun.

So why the 3.58?

Two real problems, and readers found both of them independently, which is usually a sign they're actually there.

The first: the Tooth Fairy is interchangeable. One reviewer put it better than I could, pointing out that the story never gets tooth-specific and could just as easily be called How to Trick the Easter Bunny. She'd picked it up because her own kids wanted to trick the Tooth Fairy, and found that teeth are essentially irrelevant to the plot.

She's right. The title gets you through the door. Then the book goes off to do something else.

The second is the pranks themselves. Some of them aren't pranks.

Dropping water balloons on people walking past. Dressing as a monster to scare a sleeping little sister. Putting marbles in front of the fireplace so Santa falls.

That last one is not a trick. That's a trip hazard.

And another reviewer nails the distinction I'd want: ice cream everywhere isn't a prank, because it isn't clever. It's just a mess.

That's the line, and it's a useful one for a kid. A prank has a trick in it. A mess is just a mess, and somebody has to clean it up.

So I wouldn't lecture about this book. I'd use it.

The question I'd actually ask: which of these were funny for everybody, and which were only funny for Kaylee?

Now you've got somewhere to go, and the kid gets to make the call rather than being handed it.

Because pranking isn't automatically mean. Surprise is funny. A fake frog is funny.

But if one person is miserable and the other one is laughing, we've wandered out of a prank and into something else.

Readit's Review

REAL FROGS?

Yes.

"How many?"

Enough that the fake frog looks like a tactical error.

"I would keep them."

Of course you would.

"Then the Tooth Fairy has to come back."

Why?

"Tooth Fairy brings frogs. I want frogs. So I lose more teeth."

That is not how any of this works.

"How do you know?"

Because...

Okay, fair question.

Also Kaylee should have hidden the tooth somewhere really hard.

Where?

"Inside another tooth."

That makes no sense.

"She'd never find it."

Nobody would ever find it.

"Best prank ever."

What Others Think

This is the widest gap between audience and readers we've seen.

KidTime StoryTime's read-aloud has 9.3 million views and 27,000 likes, and it sits in their most-popular collection.

Goodreads has the book at 3.58 out of 5 from 325 ratings. Only 51 percent land at four or five stars, a full third park at three, and 14 percent go one or two.

Nine million views, a 3.58.

The positive side is real. Cecelia calls it adorable and predicts it "will tickle kids' funny bones and (possibly) inspire future prank wars," which strikes me as an accurate warning as well as a compliment. Librarians report it going over well at storytime, where the escalating pranks get laughs.

And that makes sense. Performed out loud to a group, escalation is everything and the details go by fast.

Read at home, one to one, an adult has time to look at each prank.

That's where it loses people. Jillian liked the illustrations and the idea but listed the specific pranks that bothered her, and concluded "I think the level of pranks just took it too far." Sarah Hyatt was harsher and more precise, calling it "an uncomfortable read of increasingly mean retaliation."

I don't think those readers are being precious. They're describing the book accurately. Whether it bothers you depends on your kid and your house.

Belly Laugh Scale

3 out of 5: Solid Chuckles

The premise is a five. The execution brings it down.

Fake frog into real frogs is a great escalation, and for a prank-loving kid this absolutely gets the room going. Nine million people did not click on that video by accident.

But a comedy engine needs its jokes to be clever, and several of these are just mess or just mean. When the funniest beat is somebody getting covered in ice cream, the book is doing volume instead of wit.

Add a title that promises the Tooth Fairy and then largely forgets about teeth, and I land on three.

Solid Chuckles. Strong hook, uneven follow-through.

Final Explorer Verdict

Ages 4 to 8, and it's a natural at that glorious stage when teeth start falling out and the whole household is suddenly tracking dental inventory.

But buy it knowing what it is.

This is not a sweet Tooth Fairy story. It's a prank battle wearing a Tooth Fairy costume, and if you're after the traditional tooth-under-the-pillow magic, this will not scratch that itch.

What it's genuinely good for is a kid who loves pranks and an adult willing to talk about them. The book hands you concrete examples to argue over, which is more than most books manage.

Which ones were funny? Which went too far? Would you laugh if somebody did that to you?

Kids have strong opinions about fairness, and this book gives them something to aim those opinions at.

Read it aloud with energy and it flies. Read it slowly at bedtime and you'll start noticing the marbles in front of the fireplace.

If your kid likes watching a situation get gloriously out of hand, there's a connection to my own shelf. Petey Perfectpants and the Silly Sock Puppet Problem comes at it from the opposite end. Petey is desperate to keep everything perfect, and once control slips, the chaos takes the wheel.

Readit?

"Yeah?"

If you lose a tooth tonight, no pranking the Tooth Fairy.

"Okay."

That was suspiciously easy.

"I don't have teeth."

Right.

"Do you?"

We're ending the review.

Keep exploring, Story Seekers!

Jungle Jimmy & Readit