How to Trick the Tooth Fairy

Title: How to Trick the Tooth Fairy
Genre: Fantasy
Author: Erin Danielle Russell
Major Awards: None
Age Group: Pre-K-1st grade

Kaylee is the queen of pranks. She pulls pranks day-in and day-out, and even pulled one on Santa Claus! She knows that nobody can perform pranks better than she can until...she meets the Tooth Fairy! She pranks the Tooth Fairy by putting a fake frog under her pillow instead of her tooth. This causes the Tooth Fairy to cast a spell and fill Kaylee's room with real frogs. The Tooth Fairy and Kaylee try to outperform each other in pranks, and then realize what a mess they have made in Kaylee's house. In the end, they clean up their mess and decide that they should become friends instead of trying to be better than the other. 

I am unsure about if I would want this in my classroom. Sure, it is a silly story about the antics of a Tooth Fairy, but it did not really have a big impact on me. The main character, Kaylee, and the Tooth Fairy pulled some not-so-safe and very mean pranks on each other, and I would not want my students to think that these were ok to do to another person. It also did not have much of a plot; the storyline was basically about who could perform the meanest prank. 

I think that Pre-K through first grade would be the most appropriate ages for this book. There are very few words on each page, and the words are all easy to sound out, so I think that early readers would read this book with ease. Though I was not the most impressed by this book, maybe these young students would get more pleasure out of reading it. I would definitely explain to my students that they should not perform the pranks that the characters performed in the book, though. 

In my classroom, I could tell my students that the Tooth Fairy was going to make a special appearance in our classroom during the night. I could have each of my students color a tooth, and put it inside their desks. When they arrived at school the next day, the Tooth Fairy would have taken their "teeth", and left them a silly surprise. (silly string!) I think that students would get a taste of how a prank works, and see how it can be fun instead of being mean! I also could have them design their own fairy, and we could hang them up around the room.