Cousin Ruth’s Tooth
By Amy MacDonald
Illustrated by Marjorie Priceman
Published by Houghton Mifflin Harcourt
Ages 2-7 years
• Children’s Choice Award
• ABA Pick of the List
• Child Magazine Best of the Year
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What’s it about?
Another harebrained escapade involving the Fister clan. This time Cousin Ruth’s tooth is missing, and no one can find it, despite searching high and low – and in the most ridiculous places (“Check the hatbox! Check the cat box! Look inside the VCR!”). Once again the Queen comes to the rescue, helping Ruth announce the solution to the mystery.
Where did the idea come from?
Originally I thought I might try to write a story about a beaver who loses a tooth, but before I got very far with that, I realized how much funnier it would be if the Fisters lost a tooth. I didn’t intend to write another rhyming book – when I finished Rachel Fister’s Blister I swore that I would never write another book in rhyme – it’s really hard! But I couldn’t resist this one.
What else?
Just to make the whole rhyming thing harder – as if it wasn’t hard enough! – I decided to use the names of famous children’s book editors when I was making up names for Ruth’s relatives:
“Find your cousins
— several dozens —
Get your uncles and your aunts:
“Bess! Matilda!
Olga! Zelda!
Mary Lee and Uncle Lance!
” Uncle Walter …” etc.
So Uncle Walter is the famed editor Walter Lorraine. Mary Lee is Mary Lee Donovan (my editor!). Matilda is Matilda Weltner, another legendary editor. And so on. But no one knows that little fact, except me. And now you.
What have reviewers said?
• Children’s Choice Award
• ABA Pick of the List
• Child Magazine Best of the Year
“The supremely silly family’s wild-goose chase is charted in an ideal marriage of text and artwork…It’s a perfect romp. The rambunctiously sly rhyming text will tickle the funny bones of preschoolers.” —Publishers Weekly
“…a great read-aloud” —School Library Journal
“priceless.” —Kirkus Reviews
“hilarious misadventures of the Fisters…fast-paced romp through…tongue-twisting rhymes.” –Child magazine