SOLVED. Children-collection of twisted, dark fairy tales, one about the tooth fairy, illustrated with black and white sketches [s]

[Kendra]

Older book that I read as a child (1980's) not sure about published date. The book has fairy tales that have a slightly odd twist and illustrations inside. One story was about a tooth fairy but I can't seem to grasp the rest.

[Ann aka Iftcan]

What made them "odd" Kendra? And what did the tooth fairy do?

[Kendra]

The stories were creepy and had a slightly scary twist. I think the tooth fairy had a castle made from the teeth she collected.

[Emily]

I saw a book called Tooth Fairy Castles by Carol Bates Hutchinson (https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/4...) but it sounds like it is just one story and it's described as "whimsical," so I'm assuming that is not what you're looking for. Plus it's from 2008... I'll keep looking.

[Emily]

Here is someone's brief description of Hogfather by Terry Pratchet: "In Hogfather we see the driver of the collection cart Ernie, Violet as a tooth fairy and Charlie, an overseers. All tooth fairies carry a pair of pliers, in case they don't have the right change and have to remove an extra tooth; this caused problems for one tooth fairy when a child slept with his head under the pillow." Again, not a book with multiple stories and I'm not sure when it was originally published. https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/3...

[Kendra]

Thanks for looking but I'm afraid that neither one of those is the right one. :-( I'm wracking my brain, trying to remember another story from the book but I've come up with nothing so far. I'll add more as I can think of it.

[Kagama-the Literaturevixen]

Emily wrote: "Here is someone's brief description of Hogfather by Terry Pratchet: "In Hogfather we see the driver of the collection cart Ernie, Violet as a tooth fairy and Charlie, an overseers. All tooth fairie..."

That was the book that first come to mind for me too lol

[Ann aka Iftcan]

Witch and Wombat has the tooth castle for the tooth fairy too. It seems to be fairly common to do that for the tooth fairy, I guess.

[Kate]

Try Roald Dahl's Revolting Rhymes

[Laina]

Hi Kendra, although I don't recall any tooth fairies, you may be remembering a book with original (not touched up) fairy tales. A lot of the traditional tales are quite grisly in the original telling.

Andrew Lang's colored Fairy Tale books would be a good place to start. Each volume contains a selection of tales with black and white pencil drawings throughout.

Andrew Lang

[Kendra]

I'll take a look at Andrew Lang, thank you for the recommendations.

[Ann aka Iftcan]

Kendra--check out ANY fairy tale collection printed before say 1960 or so. The "original" tales were not like they are now. For instance, in The Little Mermaid at the end of the story the prince marries someone else and she throws herself back into the sea and turns to seafoam. So, definitely not a happy ending there.

[Emily]

Hope you find it! I you do, please let us know what the title is.

[Kendra]

I will make sure to update if/when I find it. I've been searching for a few years now, off and on, without any success. Hopefully this time will be different!

[Laina]

Hi Kendra, my 2-year-old is a big Mother Goose fan and we've been running through all the Mother Goose collections at the library. Right now we're reading The Charles Addams Mother Goose and I thought he might be the illustrator you are remembering.

Charles Addams 1912-1988

I don't think the Mother Goose book we are reading is the one you are looking for, as the tooth fairy isn't in there, but the illustrations are just as you describe - they have a sort of macabre twist. For instance, in "Three Blind Mice" it's an illustration of the stone-faced characters from "American Gothic" and the wife has just chopped the tails off the mice with an electric carving knife. "I Do Not Like You, Dr. Fell" is a scientist with his patient strapped onto a table and all hooked up implying electro-shock therapy is about to begin.

Maybe you can find your book amongst his bibliography!

[[deleted user]]

Read this other search someone had, he found his book, perhaps it's the same book you are looking for: https://www.goodreads.com/topic/show/...

[caracal-eyes]

Maybe Joan Aiken's The Last Slice of Rainbow and Other Stories? According to the Goodreads page, first published 1985. The story featuring the Tooth Fairy is called "Clem's Dream." I was unable to find the text of the story online, but a Google Books result in The Good People: New Fairylore Essays says, 'In a fearsome illustration for Joan Aiken's story "Clem's Dream"...she is the conventionally evil, scraggly-haired crone; here she takes not only children's teeth but their dreams.' In the story I guess Clem goes after the Tooth Fairy to get his dream back. Don't know whether there's a tooth-castle though.

[Laina]

Wow, that looks promising! Hopefully we'll hear from Kendra that you've found it! :)

[Cheryl]

Kendra, you've got more suggestions, are any of them right?

[Lobstergirl, au gratin]

Kendra is still looking for this. It's possible she read it in 1990 or thereabouts.

[Kendra]

I'm so grateful that you tagged this post! I tried to find it before I posted my other thread but was unable to. The Last Slice of Rainbow is it!!!!!! I'm overjoyed that y'all were able to help me, thank you!!!

[Lobstergirl, au gratin]

Oh that's great. By the way, here's another thread where someone was looking for the same book:

http://www.goodreads.com/topic/show/1...