David Christiana

Sasha's mom gives her a bright yellow ball to play with on a rainy day. It bounces through the door in the mantel clock's shadow and over a bridge of butterflies, and Sasha follows. Sasha then finds a farmer had planted her ball in hopes that it might grow "flowers gold as finch's wings . . . a golden hen . . . and starlight-covered jelly beans." Sasha finds all manner of hidden "things worn or wished on, old or lost." The farmer, who is the King of Keys, eventually gives her back her yellow ball, and she finds herself back in her own living room. Her house may be "small and plain," but a hundred pencils writing on sheets of gold could not hold "the strange adventures / shadows hide." Scholastic Book Wizard has identified this as a K-2 level story, but I would have to disagree. This story is incredibly mature for it's children's literature mask, and I believe third to seventh graders would enjoy this more than a young child. While the illustrations do allow for a childish charm, the content of the story is definitely hard to understand at such a young age because of the poetic depth that the author has included. I would not want to introduce this as poetry at a young age as well because children may feel discouraged from the start and feel that they will never understand poetry if it's all like this. Speaking of the illustrations, I believe that this book should have won a Caldecott or been a Caldecott honor. The art is incredible and majestic. I believe that is what has always drawn me to this book despite still having confusion about the story. I am giving this story a 3/5. While the poetry and cadence of the story is beautiful, as well as the illustrations, I feel that this would be too confusing at a young age and I would refrain from using this in my classroom until the higher grades.… (meer)

This book follows what most traditional fairytales follow in a story. In this story all the fairies live in a sandcastle but were turned into stone from looking into the giant’s evil eyes. All the fairies except for the tooth fairy, she was the only one left and lived in the sandcastle with her father, the sandman, he cleans the giant’s eye with a feather. The tooth fairy really misses her mother, she was turned into stone because she looked into the giant’s eyes. The tooth fairy has an idea to ask the giant if she could get her mother back and is told that the only way, she will come back is from what dreams are made of. The tooth fairy and the giant go back and forth with letters about what she must do to get her mother back. The tooth fairy takes it upon herself because the giant is starting to be greedy and not be fair with the tooth fairy. She finds out that dreams are made of tooth dust and that’s how she finally gets her mother back. This is like most fairy tales that have a happy ending.… (meer)