Authorpreneur Dashboard – Skeeter Buck
The Toothless Fairy
Children's Books
The world is filled with candy and sweets, especially at certain times of the year. For one, lonely fairy, sweets become her refuge and she hides her face and toothless grin, sad to not have one friend. But, she is a generous and sweet-loving fairy. Her greatest fear is that her face is full of warts and her nub of a nose will be cause for rejection. She watches the children have fun in the streets of summer and she wishes that she could befriend them, but she is too afraid to make the first approach. What if they are scared? What if they don’t like her? On one day, as Autumn begins she looks down at the children and they are dressed in scary outfits—they look like ghouls and ghosts, witches and warlocks, and even fairies. She is baffled and surprised that the children are not scared of each other and of their selves. She thought that looking scary meant that no one would want to be her friend. She has a realization—perhaps being scary is not all that bad. So a wistful plan is formed. But will her plan lead to new friends or heartbreak?
Rough-Cut Book Bubbles from The Toothless Fairy
Building the Storyline
What came to light for our young writer and for the first time publisher is the social and emotional development of children. Among the many significant developments are the need to play, the longing to belong and the haunting feeling of always feeling different than others. It is in this way we used the Toothless Fairy to express her needs, desires and her frustration in looking different than others.
"...where does she live..."
Before we moved too far along in this writing project, we conducted three focus groups with kids and parents. All we had was 150 words of the manuscript, which reads much different now than it did then. Our first two focus groups were conducted in a homeschool center with pre-schoolers and their parents, and the other was in a public library. We wanted to get a sense of not only how the words and storyline were landing, but also about the visuals that didn't exist at this stage. One of the first questions we were asked by the kids is "...where does she live..." so, we knew we need to address that question straight away. Hence, you see her living in a treehouse made of candy.
How she came to be...
The Toothless Fairy came into our lives when my son was 2 years old. As parents, when we came home from trick or treating we were secretly trying to figure out what to do that all that candy! In a creative moment, we started to tell him the story of the Toothless Fairy who loved candy. "It was said that sometimes if you decided to share your candy with her on the evening of Halloween -- after you went to bed of course -- she might come and take your excess candy and leave you a gift in return."
