Mallory, Mallory: The Revenge of the Tooth Fairy
James Norcliffe with illustrations by Emily Walker
Penguin Random House New Zealand
pub. 2020

15 March, 2021

In Mallory, Mallory: The Revenge of the Tooth Fairy, James Norcliffe writes a thrilling tale about the adventures of Mallory and Arthur. Mallory captures the tooth fairy and tries to blackmail her into giving her money; but you really shouldn’t try and capture a magical creature.

The story starts with Mallory’s loose tooth. When Mallory realises that she has a loose tooth, she hatches her (top secret) plan:

1. Borrow Dad‘s razor bag
2. Attach tooth to cotton
3. Attach other end of cotton to finger
4. Put tooth into bag
5. Hide bag under pillow
6. Go to bed
7. Try to stay awake all night, or stay half-awake and rely on the cotton
8. When the tooth fairy comes and climbs into the bag to get the tooth, pull the drawstring on the bag, trapping the tooth fairy inside
9. Keep the tooth fairy prisoner.

But Mallory finds a lot of problems with her plan. She needs a place to put the tooth fairy (disguised as a mouse) to keep her prisoner, so she uses Arthur’s birdcage. The only problem with that is that Arthur’s birdcage has a bird in it; his blue budgie Bruce, so Arthur is a bit reluctant to let her use it.

The tooth fairy explains she doesn’t have the money with her, and she has to “go and fetch it.” Then the tooth fairy, Mallory, and Arthur travel to Oralia to get the money. In Oralia, Mallory and Arthur have to face the giant molars, the strict hex checker, the brutal incisors, the judging wisdom tooth, and the powerful major rat.

My rating for this book is four out of five stars. My rating is based on:

– The morals (four stars)

–  The amount of time it takes to read it (not too little or too much, so I give it five stars)

–  How I felt after I read it (three stars)

Now I want to talk about the illustrations; they are very good, and just life-like enough for a book like this. The illustrations I didn’t like were the ones of the molars. They really don’t seem like the descriptions in the book; the beard just did not look like it should have, and they didn’t quite look like they were “dusted in flour.”

I’m not trying to criticise these illustrations; they were very good in some places. The hex checker looked quite as she was described, as well as the gum forest and the wisdom tooth, and I thought there was a really good job done on Mallory and Arthur.

Morals: I don’t want to spoil it, so I’ll just tell you a little bit about them. Mallory finds out how harmful her scheme can be to others.

• Beckett Dada-Maroni lives in Wakefield, near Nelson.