The First Tooth Calendar
A first tooth is the most prized thing a fairy can find among the shells. This is the story of what the Land did with it, told over twenty-four mornings, one door at a time.
Two editions. The wooden calendar is a birch board with twenty-four recesses cut into the wood itself and sealed with numbered paper. Behind each door: a small engraved tile, a note too small to read without the Fairy Glass, and an errand that sends your child outside to find something real. The tile goes into the keepsake frame. By door twenty-four the frame shows the whole of Toothfairy Land, with your child's name engraved along the bottom.
The card calendar is the same twenty-four notes and errands on thick biodegradable card, with the picture on the doors themselves, and six of the doors hold a tooth-shaped seed sealed in a little window in place of a coin. Those doors tear out and get planted in spring. It comes with the First Harvest card, which explains why the fairies' seeds are shaped like teeth. When the season is over, the rest of it goes in the compost, or on the wall.
Choose the season the tooth came out in. A winter tooth lights lanterns and candles; a spring tooth wakes the meadow; a summer tooth brings in the harvest; an autumn tooth turns the leaves. Each season is its own story.
Winter edition available now. The other seasons arrive as they are written.
Fairy Wages
An optional coin behind the doors: the Land's share of what the first tooth earned.
Add Fairy Wages and the doors hold coins, fresh from the mint, handled by fairies in cotton gloves so they stay shiny. Each note says what the Land earned that day and why: a beach toll, a map sold, candles for the solstice. Two doors hold nothing because the fair was closed, which is the first lesson. The last door holds a golden dollar from the Keeper. It adds up to exactly $5.00 on the wooden calendar, and the card calendar's coins are rebalanced so that with six doors paid in seed it still comes to exactly $5.00.
A ledger card goes beside the frame so your child does the adding, and three slots on the frame hold the decision at the end: spend, save, give.
$12 added to the calendar, which covers the coins and the extra postage they weigh.
The twenty-four days (winter)
- Door 1 · quarter The First Frost Find something outside that has frost or dew on it. Look at it through the Fairy Glass before it melts.
- Door 2 · dime Three Leaves Find three different kinds of leaves. Put the smallest one in today's pocket.
- Door 3 · quarter · nasturtium seed on the card calendar A Pinecone From the Oaks Shake the pinecone gently over a dark piece of paper and see what falls out.
- Door 4 The Quietest Minute Go outside, stand still for one whole minute, and count the sounds you hear.
- Door 5 · quarter The Sea Wall Find one smooth stone, about the size of your thumbnail, and put it in the pocket.
- Door 6 · dime A Slice of Summer Hold the orange slice up to a window and look at the light through it.
- Door 7 · quarter · pumpkin seed on the card calendar Tracks Look for animal tracks or bird footprints in snow, mud, or frost. Draw one on the back of this note.
- Door 8 · quarter The Lantern Count Tonight, after dark, count the lights you can see from one window.
- Door 9 · dime Something Green Find something that is still green outside and touch it.
- Door 10 · quarter The Wind's Errand Find out which way the wind is blowing today, and tell a grown-up how you worked it out.
- Door 11 · nickel · nasturtium seed on the card calendar The Tooth Counter Open wide in a mirror and count the teeth you have now. Write the number on the back.
- Door 12 · quarter A Star From the Hill Put the star somewhere high, where you can see it from your bed.
- Door 13 · dime The Bird Table Put out something for the birds: crumbs, seeds, a bit of apple. Watch for ten minutes.
- Door 14 · quarter Ice Find some ice outside and watch it melt in your hand, or on a warm plate.
- Door 15 · quarter · pumpkin seed on the card calendar A Token From the Treasury Keep this token in your pocket all day. Touch it when you need a bit of courage.
- Door 16 A Walk With No Reason Go for a walk with a grown-up with nowhere to be. Come back when you feel like it.
- Door 17 · dime The Smell of Winter Go outside and find three smells. Tell a grown-up what they were.
- Door 18 · quarter Summer, Pressed Look at the pressed flower with the glass. Then put it in a book you love.
- Door 19 · dime · nasturtium seed on the card calendar The Longest Night Is Coming Watch the sun go down tonight, from a window or outside. Notice what time it was.
- Door 20 · quarter A Gift for the Tree Choose one tree near your home. Leave it a small gift at the bottom: a stone, a shell, a feather.
- Door 21 · quarter The Turning With a grown-up, light the candle stub at dusk and watch it for as long as it lasts.
- Door 22 · dime · pumpkin seed on the card calendar Thank the Water Find moving water outside, a stream or a drain or a dripping icicle, and say thank you to it.
- Door 23 · quarter The Feast Table Set one tiny place at the table tonight, with an acorn cap or a bottle cap for a plate, for the fairy.
- Door 24 · golden dollar Spring, Folded Small Keep this paper safe until spring. When the ground is soft, plant it with a grown-up and water it. It is made of flower seeds.
Door one, in full
The First Frost
Dear Maisie,
Winter has arrived in Toothfairy Land. I know because this morning the rock pools at the bottom of the beach had a skin of ice on them as thin as a fingernail, and the fairies spent an hour skating before it cracked.
Your first tooth came in on the tide this week. A first tooth is the most prized thing a fairy can find among the shells, and the whole Land came down to the sand to see it. We are going to put it to work, and I am going to write you a note every day for twenty-four days to tell you what it did.
Today's errand is a small one. Find something outside with frost or dew on it and look at it through your glass. Then tell me tomorrow what it looked like. I will know if you did it. Fairies always know.
Your fairy, bundled up,
Pip
Today's errand: Find something outside that has frost or dew on it. Look at it through the Fairy Glass before it melts.
Already have the Journey Kit?
Your confirmation email has a fairy code. It takes 20 percent off the calendar, and the story picks up with the same fairy.
The First Harvest
The card that comes with the first seed door, in full, because it is the oldest story in the Land.
Long before the Post Office, before the lantern on the beach, the fairies did not know what a tooth was for. They kept them in a jar. The jar got full.
One autumn a young fairy called Mossbeard, who had not yet earned the Old, got tired of the clutter and planted the whole jar along the riverbank, mostly to be rid of it. The fairies went hungry that winter, as they did most winters. In spring, vines came up where the teeth had gone in. By autumn the bank was covered in orange pumpkins too big for a fairy to lift, and peppery flowers you could eat straight off the stem.
The fairies ate well for the first time anyone could remember. They have counted the years from that autumn ever since. This is Harvest 1,021. Mossbeard claims to remember the first one personally, which is the main reason everyone calls him Old.
And here is the part the children are told. The plants noticed where they had come from. The next year, when the pumpkins and the nasturtiums made their seeds, every one came out shaped like a small white tooth, and they have grown that way ever since, so the Land would never forget who sent them. That is why fairies wear cotton gloves to handle both coins and seeds. The coins so they stay shiny. The seeds out of respect.
What it is made of
Wooden: Baltic birch board and frame, laser engraved. Cotton paper seals and notes. Brass Fairy Glass. Coins from the US Mint. Card: thick recycled kraft card, soy ink, glassine seed windows, seed packets with the grower's label. No plastic anywhere in either box, including the box.