It's Not Nice To Fool the Tooth Fairy! Here Comes the Tooth Fairy Cat by Deborah Underwood

CAT! YOU LOST A TOOTH?
DID THE TOOTH FAIRY COME?

SHE LEFT YOU A COIN?

WHAT'S THE MATTER?

YOU WANT TO MEET HER? AWW, CAT!

Deborah Underwood's bewhiskered shyster is back, this time trying to trick the Tooth Fairy into making a return visit so he can cop another coin and sneak a peek at the celebrity fairy. He sneakily stows a tooth from a broken comb under his pillow. What can go wrong?

But what he gets is a visit from the delivery man with a card from the Fairy for Cat.

IF YOU HELP ME WITH A FEW DELIVERIES, MAYBE WE CAN MEET!

Wow! The Tooth Fairy is on to his hoax. She sends him a tutu, some wings, a list of lost-tooth customers needing delivery, and....

P.S: YOU'LL HAVE A HELPER!

I WONDER WHAT THAT MEANS.

POOF! A chagrined little mouse in tiny wings and tutu appears, obviously busted for the same bunco caper. Cat tries ripping up the list, but apparently the Tooth Fairy is doing due diligence surveillance and a "Spare List" promptly floats down.

There's nothing for it but for Cat and Mouse to get going on their deliveries, and they soon find out that being tooth fairy trainees is not cushy duty. Their deliveries include a grumpy gopher down a hole (a job for a burrowing mouse), a squirrel in a hollow tree (Cat is the designated tall tree climber) and a bear in a cave (Mouse goes in for the tooth exchange, but Cat has to come to his rescue when a ticklish situation develops inside). Whew!

Penance done, Cat returns home with more respect for the Tooth Fairy, in Underwood's latest Cat story, Here Comes the Tooth Fairy Cat (Dial Books, 2015), which uses a creative format in which Cat communicates by facial expressions, body language, and picture placards, and the narrator acts as the interlocutor to suggest what Cat is really up to. The shrewd narrator apparently knows Cat all too well. He's a con man of a cat, but as in Deborah Underwood's earlier Here Comes the Easter Cat (read review here) and Here Comes Santa Cat, the Tooth Fairy is on to Cat's tricks, and teaches him a lesson in what it really takes to do the job right.

But to make this inventive book design work, the author needs just the right illustrator, and luckily she has one, Claudia Rueda, who shared the duties on the previous Cat books. Rueda's deft drawings subtly express Cat's hustler intentions with sly humor, making this one a great addition to the limited library of tooth fairy lit for young readers. Kirkus Reviews agrees: "Clever fun continues in this delightful series."

Pair this with Lucy Bate's classic Little Rabbit's Loose Tooth. for a toothful twosome of treats.