I enjoyed this book about the tooth fairy overall. I like how the tooth fairy collects your teeth and place money under your pillow. I love how the tooth fairy has an actual tooth business for so long. She even has a company called Teen Titans Incorporated. I remember being too excited to put my teeth under the pillow. When I woke up my teeth were gone and I saw two dollars. I had two teeth under my pillow. I was interested in how the tooth fairy looked. She looks like an actual businesswoman ready to work. The illustrations in the book have soft and hard paint texture. The style of this book is confidence. The tooth fairy worked so hard to get her own company. I am influenced by this book because it made me believe it's possible to have the determination and confidence to make it. The children would enjoy this book. ( )

Tallulah the tooth fairy, founder and CEO of Teeth Titans, Incorporated, confronts an unexpected challenge in this brightly-illustrated picture-book. Although she and her assistant tooth fairies take care of the world's children, when it comes to their baby teeth falling out, she isn't sure how to proceed when a little boy leaves her a note explaining that he has lost his tooth. Should she still leave him a reward, even though he doesn't have a tooth to offer in exchange? There isn't anything in her handbook on the issue, so she convenes a meeting of her top fairies...

Tallulah The Tooth Fairy CEO is the first picture-book I have read from both Tamara Pizzoli, an expatriate African-American educator and author living in Italy, and Federico Fabiani, an Italian illustrator who makes his debut here. Although I enjoyed the colorful, stylish illustrations from Fabiani, the story left a bad taste in my mouth. Not only does Pizzoli's narrative here feel aimed more at adult readers in general - as an online friend of mine noted in her own review, children are unlikely to care very much about Tallulah's therapy sessions or yoga exercises - it addresses contemporary race issues in a way that might feel snide and hurtful to some readers. Ironically, given the fact that both the Tooth Fairy and Santa Claus (represented here by Mrs. Claus) are European-derived cultural figures, the only two white characters - the activist protesting Mrs. Clause, and the tooth fairy assistant wearing the "#All Fairies Matter" t-shirt - are held up to both narrative and illustrative ridicule. This might work in a book aimed at adults, but in a story for children, especially at a time when we're having discussions about representation and how that effects young people's psychological well being, it feels rather tone-deaf. Unfortunately, the racial problems here aren't confined to the black-white axis, as the scene in which Tallulah summons her top aides depicts an entire table of black women, save the aforementioned t-shirt-wearing Tom. Given that Tallulah's corporation is said in the story to take care of all of the world's children, why are there no Latino or Asian fairies? Why is there only one man? And why is that very question, posed by Tom, held up to ridicule? An adult might appreciate the irony here, but will a child? Or will they simply take away the impression that such concerns are invalid when posed by white people?

I'd like to think that this is a book with its heart in the right place (I'm honestly not sure), but in the end, the delivery was terribly flawed. What might work as edgy humor in an adult book feels abusive in one for younger children. Ironically, given that almost the entire cast of characters here is of African descent, there is also something rather Eurocentric about a story in which the entirety of the world is served by tooth fairies - figures from European tradition. As it happens, there are a number of different cultural traditions from around the world, concerning the disposal of baby teeth. Young readers interested in exploring those traditions, and getting a truly multicultural take on the subject, might want to pick up something like Throw Your Tooth on the Roof: Tooth Traditions from Around the World instead. ( )