Andrew's Loose Tooth - Hardcover

This slim, paper-over-board volume by the creators of The Paper Bag Princess and Alligator Baby gives some loose-tooth cliches a slapstick spin. When Andrew's wobbly, hurting tooth prevents him from eating an apple, his mother yanks at it futilely with both hands. His father then puts his foot on the boy's nose and attempts to pull it with pliers. However, this effort is no more successful than the dentist's endeavor to tie one end of a rope to the tooth and the other to his car (which falls apart when he drives away), or the tooth fairy's attempted extraction with a hammer. A vigorous sneeze (brought on by his best friend's idea that Andrew inhale pepper) finally does the trick, sending the tooth flying through the air, "all the way across town." Martchenko's watercolor cartoons embellish the tale's hyperbole with funky touches: wearing beads and sandals, the ponytailed dentist arrives in a car boasting a giant rooftop tooth; and the leather-clad, motorcycle-riding tooth fairy sports a necklace studded with specimens of her trade. Although it's all quite inane, Munsch fans will be thoroughly entertained. Ages 3-6.
Copyright 1998 Reed Business Information, Inc.

Gr. 1^-2, younger for reading aloud. Poor Andrew. His loose tooth hurts so much he can't even bite into an apple. How to get it out? Mother can't pull it out, Father can't yank it out, it resists the dentist and even the Tooth Fairy, who roars up on her motorcycle and breaks a sledgehammer on the stubborn tooth. At last, Andrew's friend Louis comes through, with the old pepper-up-the-nose trick, and Andrew's mighty "AHHHHH-CHOO!" sends the tooth shooting off across town like a bullet. As usual, Munsch's broad (if not deep) brand of humor and patterned style of storytelling will have young listeners chiming in between chortles, and Martchenko's cartoons create a suitably comic air. As a happy Andrew gorges on apples till he bulges, the tooth is last seen whizzing over a crowd of astonished motorists, with the leather-clad Tooth Fairy (a far cry from, for instance, Peter Collington's industrious but ethereal sprite in Tooth Fairy [1995]) in hot midair pursuit. Munsch's legion of fans will love this book forever. John Peters