The Best Tooth Fairy Books for Kids

Somewhere around five or six, a child puts a finger in their mouth and finds that something moves. What follows is a week of wiggling, one abrupt exit over an apple or a jump rope or nothing at all, and then the part they actually care about: a tooth goes under a pillow and something better comes back in the morning. It is the first deal most children ever strike, and they take it extremely seriously — which is why this shelf is funnier and stranger than you would guess. It is full of kids who would rather keep the tooth, kids who lose the tooth before bedtime and have to prove it, kids building traps out of dental floss, and fairies who turn out to have night shifts, trainees, and a route that includes hippos.

Drawing from Bookroo’s collection of 70 tooth fairy books, our editors chose thirteen for the week the wobbling starts. There is one for the nervous child, one for the child who wants to negotiate, one for the child with no loose tooth yet and a growing sense of injustice, and one that answers the question every kid eventually asks: what does she do with all of them? We kept only books where the fairy — or her conspicuous absence — is really the story rather than a line on the last page, and we favored the ones still funny on the fourth reading, because there is always a fourth reading. Start with the thirteen, then browse by age below.