Horrid Henry Tricks the Tooth Fairy

Horrid Henry: Tricking the Tooth Fairy
Horrid Henry Tricks The Tooth Fairy

First edition with the book's original title
Author	Francesca Simon
Original title	Horrid Henry and the Tooth Fairy
Illustrator	Tony Ross
Cover artist	Tony Ross
Language	English
Series	Horrid Henry
Genre	Young adult fiction
Publisher	Orion
Publication date	1996
Publication place	Great Britain
Media type	Print (Hardback)
ISBN	978-1-85881-371-4
Preceded by	Horrid Henry And The Secret Club
Followed by	Horrid Henry's Nits

Horrid Henry: Tricking the Tooth Fairy, published from 2000 to 2019 as Horrid Henry Tricks The Tooth Fairy, is the third book of the Horrid Henry series. It was first published in 1996 as Horrid Henry and the Tooth Fairy and was written by Francesca Simon and illustrated by Tony Ross.

Everyone in Horrid Henry's class had lost at least one tooth - that is except Henry himself. Just today, his younger brother, Perfect Peter had lost a tooth. So, Henry decides to eat as many sweets as he can from his sweet jar, although it is two days before "Sweet Day" when he is allowed to eat sweets. Henry's "hard work" comes to a waste when none of his teeth feel wobbly and worse, his mouth, gums and stomach hurt. Then, he gets a "brilliant" idea. He decides to trick the tooth fairy. So on that night, Henry silently creeps into Peter's room and steals the tooth Peter placed under his pillow but bumps into his mother and manages to escape. The next morning, Henry doesn't find a coin from the tooth fairy but Peter finds a pound coin from the fairy. Henry asks his mother how the tooth fairy knows whose pillow to put money and she says that she looks at the gap between the child's teeth. Henry realizes his mistake and places a piece of black paper over his mouth. At night, when he sleeps, he ties his finger to a fake vampire tooth (a substitute for the real one) to make sure that when the tooth fairy comes and takes his tooth, he gets woken up. The next morning, Henry receives a fake 50p coin and a letter from the tooth fairy, mocking him for his trick. Henry's mother calls him down and scolds him for eating all the sweets and tells him to eat apples instead. Henry takes an apple and bites on it. To his horror, the bite had made him lose a tooth and he had swallowed it!^[1]

Horrid Henry's cousin, Prissy Polly, is marrying Pimply Paul. Henry has been chosen to be a pageboy, along with Perfect Peter, his brother. First, Henry's family has trouble with Henry's pageboy clothes as they are too "tight". Second, they have trouble with Henry going to the wedding and they drag him into the car to go. Worse still, they are caught in the middle of a thunderstorm. They arrive at the wedding later than everybody. While the priest says all the holy blessings and promises, Henry pretends he is a famous chef who is tossing pancakes, only that he is tossing the wedding rings. When the rings (which Henry lost) are needed, Henry gives them a toy pirate ring. Afterwards, when everyone takes photos, Henry jumps in at the last moment and makes horrible faces. A while later, during the reception, while everyone is eating their lunch, Henry secretly eats the wedding cake but Pimply Paul catches him. While Paul is chasing Henry, he leaps and lands into the cake. Henry's entire family thinks it's weird that there is no wedding cake...except for Henry!^[2]

Moody Margaret is going to move into Henry's house for two weeks. His room is also given to Margaret and he has to sleep in Perfect Peter's room. When Margaret arrives, she immediately orders everyone to do spring cleaning. After that, everyone has dinner and Margaret consistently gets Henry into trouble. At bedtime, Margaret booby traps Henry's bed and stresses his parents by complaining. In the morning, Margaret blasts everyone out of bed with the noise from her trumpet, screams at the top of her voice to Mum and forces her to make breakfast for her. She found Henry's secret biscuits and crisps and ate every single one. On Wednesday, Margaret bans everyone from playing tapes because it disturbs her. One Thursday, Margaret stops Henry from singing as it disturbs her. On Friday, she makes Henry stop breathing for a while as it disturbs her. Henry gets fed up and devises a plan to get rid of her. He calls Margaret's parents to come at once from their holiday as Margaret is in an emergency. His plan works and Margaret's gone but Peter tells Mum and Dad what Henry did. Henry prepares for his punishment when Mum just simply says to him, "Go to your room." and Henry thinks that sweeter words were never spoken due to being kept from his room for 6 days.^[3]

Horrid Henry is a teacher's worst nightmare, but not for Ninius Nerdon. When he is Henry's teacher, he demonstrates his resilience perfectly. He can backfire Henry's tricks on him and answer back to a stupid statement that Henry gives. He never demonstrates irateness towards Henry and can even twist Henry's rude jokes into a nightmare for Henry. But when Henry makes him believe that Peter has fallen to his death out of an upstairs window, Mr. Nerdon faints and gets taken away in an ambulance. Henry however isn’t bothered about the fact that the even more notorious teacher (towards students) Miss Battle-Axe will be teach his class from then on.^[4]

• The book was first published in Hardback in 1996.
• It was published in Paperback in 1997.
• The current edition was published in 2000.
• "Horrid Henry's New Teacher" has been reprinted in "Horrid Henry's Big Bad Book".^[5]
• "Horrid Henry Tricks the Tooth Fairy" has been reprinted in "Horrid Henry's Wicked Ways.^[6]
• "Moody Margaret Moves In" has been reprinted in "Horrid Henry's Evil Enemies'.^[7]
• "Horrid Henry's Wedding has been reprinted in "Horrid Henry's Dreadful Deeds".^[8]
• The entire book, along with every other Horrid Henry book has been reprinted in "Horrid Henry's A-Z of Everything Horrid".^[9]
• The entire book has been reprinted in Paperback with an audio CD with it, still of the same title^[10]
• Horrid Henry Tricks the Tooth Fairy and Horrid Henry's Wedding were reprinted in the Early Readers series, aimed at younger children, with colour illustrations in 2013 and 2014 respectively.

• All the stories have been adapted into animated episodes in the Horrid Henry TV series.

• Horrid Henry Tricks the Tooth Fairy at the Horrid Henry Official Website