Getting serious about tooth fairies

Gregory Maguire expanded the serial "Gangster Teeth," which first appeared in the Globe, into "What-the-Dickens." (Jonathan wiggs/globe staff/file 2003)

What-the-Dickens
By Gregory Maguire
Candlewick Press, 304 pp., $15.99

If there's a maker of ratatouille in the kitchen of American fiction, it's Gregory Maguire. Hand him your favorite childhood stories and he'll slice them, dice them, mix them up in his MuseMaster 2000, and pour out one deliciously fresh concoction after another. In his latest dish for young adults, Maguire tosses tooth fairies, faith, freedom, and a deadly hurricane into the mix, and the result is "What-the-Dickens."

The story opens with the Ormsby's - a religious family "trying the experiment of living by gospel standards," which mostly means living apart from people and avoiding cable TV, computers, and malls. A Katrina-like hurricane has hit the area, and the parents have been forced into town on a medical emergency. So 10-year-old Dinah, her brother Zeke, and her baby sister Rebecca Ruth are in the care of Gage, their kindly but overwhelmed 21-year-old cousin.

With no power, lights, phone, or food, Gage tries to distract the kids with a story about an orphan skibberee (a.k.a. tooth fairy) named What-the-Dickens. Tiny, winged, with limbs no thicker than toothpicks and skin that can shift color, skibbereen do the traditional job of trading coins for teeth. But What-the-Dickens doesn't know this, because he was hatched inside a tin can with no other skibbereen in sight.

For 40 or so pages, What-the-Dickens wanders around trying to figure out who he is, where he came from, and what he's supposed to be doing - a journey that mimics P.D. Eastman's "Are You My Mother?" a little too much at times. But then he runs into Pepper, a fiercely independent female out on a tooth-gathering mission, and the story quickly picks up.

Pepper thinks What-the-Dickens is either a spy or a rube, and doesn't want anything to do with him. But What-the-Dickens gloms onto her and, in his attempts to help her get the tooth, slows her down so much that she doesn't get back to her colony until after sunrise - a terrible no-no in the skibbereen rule book.

The skibbereen have a lot of rules, it turns out, and Dr. Ill, the colony's Oz-like leader, enforces them to the letter. He tells Pepper that her late return disqualifies her from ever becoming an "Agent of Change" (as the tooth collectors are called). But What-the-Dickens jumps to her defense, and after a lot of debate, Dr. Ill gives Pepper another chance. The catch? She has to ditch What-the-Dickens along the way.

Rules versus change, safety versus freedom, reality versus wishes - these are some of the conflicts in "What-the-Dickens," and they're explored in witty, if somewhat pointed fashion. But the greater conflict seems to be between the author and his instincts.

The tooth fairy part of "What-the-Dickens" first appeared in the Globe as the serial "Gangster Teeth," and it entertained its young readers nicely then. But when Maguire's editor first suggested turning it into something more serious, Maguire's response was, "How serious could a tooth fairy story be?"

A good question, it turns out, and one that still haunts the book. Maguire's writing is beautiful, What-the-Dickens's observations often feel inspired, and Dr. Ill's quirky, dialectical style of argument borders on Shakespearean. But how many 3- to 7-year-olds (the most common tooth fairy fans) want their fairy tales wrapped in real-world disasters? And how many 10- to 13-year-olds (the stated age range for this book) have any interest in tooth fairies?

In the cuisine of kids' books, the tooth fairy story is a smoothie - sweet, fun, rewarding, even comforting. But adding a lot of serious ingredients may only make it hard to swallow.

Chris Abouzeid is the author of "Anatopsis" and lives in Somerville.