TOOTH TROUBLE

This slim debut tale in the Ready, Freddy! series introduces first grader Freddy Thresher, who is infatuated with sharks. But in the forefront here is another of the young narrator's obsessions: losing his first tooth. The only kid in his class who still has all his baby teeth, Freddy takes a futile stab at yanking his tooth out via the slapstick string-tied-to-tooth-and-doorknob method. Since he "can hardly even tie [his] own shoes," he plans to tape the string to his tooth; when his mother interrupts, Freddy stashes the tape and string in his mouth—a scenario whose potential humor falls flat. Plan B: the lad picks a fight with the class bully, hoping a punch in the mouth will loosen a tooth. In an anticlimactic finale, Freddy loses his tooth while eating ice cream—and swallows it. Relentless name-calling among Freddy's classmates and between the boy and his older sister grows tedious, as do heavy doses of inconsequential dialogue. Klein follows up her fiction with a page of shark facts, a Mad Libs–type activity and instructions for making a tooth pillow for the Tooth Fairy. Graphite drawings play up the broad humor. Kids able to sink their teeth into this may want to check out the series' second tale, The King of Show-and-Tell (ISBN 0-439-555970-3 ), due the same month. Ages 4-up. (Aug.)