Judd Palmer Biography (1972-)

Judd Palmer has reworked several classic fairy tales into slightly twisted picture books in the "Preposterous Fables for Unusual Children" series. These books sprang from Palmer's work with the puppet company that he founded, Old Trout Puppet Workshop. The Tooth Fairy began its life as a play that Palmer wrote and the Old Trout Puppet Workshop performed, and only later did Palmer write the story down and provide illustrations for it.

Palmer's Tooth Fairy is not the sweet, elderly, coin-dispensing lady of most children's imaginations. Instead of wings, this fairy uses a hot-air balloon, and the aviator goggles that this mode of transportation requires make "its eyes look huge and watery." Abigail is determined not to surrender her perfect smile, still composed entirely of baby teeth despite the fact that the girl is twelve years old, to this creature. She decides to fight the Tooth Fairy to keep them forever, but while chasing after the Tooth Fairy she has a series of perilous adventures involving pirates and a sea monster who writes poetry. Susan Miller praised the book's tone in Resource Links, calling it "almost like a 'penny dreadful' novel written in Victorian times."

Other books in the series take up the question of what happened after the purported end of the story in fairy tales including "The Pied Piper of Hamelin" and "The Boy Who Cried Wolf." In The Maestro, the orphan Hannah moves in with her aunt and uncle in Hamelin. Because there are no other children in town to play with (having all been lured away by the Pied Piper), Hannah becomes friends with a ghostly rat named Oskar—ghostly, of course, because all of the rats in town were killed by the Pied Piper. With the rat's help, Hannah discovers the abducted children, who are imprisoned in caves and forced to perform in the Pied Piper's orchestra. A whole pack of rats and the adults of Hamelin free the children, but Hannah, who loves to sing, asks to stay and study with the Maestro. The book "is well written (almost in a lyrical manner) and is a wonderful story," Antonia Gisler wrote in Resource Links, while Canadian Materials critic Mary Thomas suggested that both The Tooth Fairy and The Maestro would appeal to readers "particularly keen on the sound and feel of language."