"Once upon a time..." the story begins, showing a lavish illustration of a magical kingdom. It's built into a tree trunk, with tiny, multi-colored slides leading to a tiny house and a rickety windmill. "...all the fairies in the world lived in a sand castle," the story continues, though it's just establishing a grand backstory. Unfortunately, all of the fairies were turned into stones by a giant's evil eye - except one. "She was a Tooth Fairy and she lived in the castle with her father, the Sandman..."
David Christiana is one of my favorite children's book illustrators, and I love the wild stories he dreams up to showcase his illustrations. He draws the tiny Sandman scrubbing the eyes of a giant with the end of a feather, while his daughter looks for teeth under the giant's pillow. One night they discover a blue stone, which they think might once have been the tooth fairy's mother. And the Sandwitch suggests that she can be saved if they cover the stone with "what dreams are made of."
The complicated drawings add a sense of magic and mystery to the book. The Sandman travels while suspending from a hot-air balloon that's strapped to his back - waving a banner that's held in place by a paper clip. The corner of the giant's den shows an enormous broken eggshell - green on the outside but purple on the inside - with purple silk falling to the floor, along with some chocolates. That illustration made me wonder if the Easter Bunny has already paid a visit. And even in the scene with the Sandwitch, her magical face is never seen - just her pointed purple hat poking up from a book, and her fancy red witchy shoes.
The tooth fairy pays for the blue stone with sand dollars. Then she even offers the giant her purple eggshell bed. In one breathtaking drawing, there's an aqua-colored bird flying through a cloudy sky, aided by red balloons, to carry an enormous old-fashioned book to the giant which cnotains "the highest numbers and the longest words." But in the end it's the tooth fairy's dust which brings back her mother - "what dreams are made of."
Sometimes you have to decipher the complicated pictures to understand the plot. (In the last picture, it seems like the Sandman is trying to turn the other rocks back into fairies.) And the story has hints of darkness, like many of the classic older fairy tales. But there's lavish, full-page watercolors on every page, offering the reader a complete world of imagination and fantasy. It makes every page feel special and fresh, and reading this book is a wonderful experience.