GRANDPA'S TEETH

A perfectly silly story with a whopping visual punchline sure to delight young listeners and readers. Grandpa's teeth have disappeared from the glass at his bedside. He can't speak properly, and the teeth are nowhere to be found. The narrator, his sister, and his parents search Grandpa's room—a particularly well-realized creation with its cobwebs and underbed detritus— but to no avail. The police are called in, and while Grandpa and his faithful dog check a line-up of disreputable characters (and Mrs. Carbuncle, whose teeth don't fit properly), the whole town starts smiling, gruesomely, to prove that their teeth are their own. This begins to scare the tourists, so a collection is taken up, Grandpa and Mrs. Carbuncle are fitted with new teeth, and the false-teeth thief is unmasked on the last page. The fully modeled, highly detailed caricatures of faces, bodies, and furniture will elicit giggles, while the inherent humor of the situation is milked for all it's worth. (Picture book. 3-8)