Heidi Heckelbeck 14 – Heidi Heckelbeck Says ‘Cheese!’

Wanda Coven's Heidi Heckelbeck Says Cheese is a school story for 6 year olds about one wobbly front tooth and a photo day that refuses to move.

What happens

Heidi is standing on a kitchen chair in front of her mum's lipstick mirror. Wiggle. Jiggle. Jaggle. The tooth is SUPER-loose and Picture Day is on Wednesday.

Her plan is simple. Don't let it fall out. Don't look at it, don't touch it, don't chew anything.

You can see the flaw in the plan, and so can everybody in the book except Heidi.

She won't let her brother Henry look at it in case looking makes it drop. She turns down lunch entirely on her best friend Lucy's advice, on the grounds that if you don't chew you can't lose a tooth. Her stomach makes a noise like a drain all afternoon. Then it's somebody's birthday and there are cookies.

The clever bit is that it's all about how she thinks she looks. Not how she does look. Every single grown-up tells her she looks adorable and she doesn't believe one of them. "It looks SO BEASTLY," she says, and beastly has just become her favourite word.

Heidi is a witch, by the way, with a proper Book of Spells under the bed. So of course she goes looking for a spell to put a tooth back. Marshmallow, lemon juice, a pinch of brown sugar. Her dad catches her mixing it at the kitchen counter.

He doesn't tell her off for long. He goes and gets a photo album instead.

That's the bit that stays with you. Dad's own second-grade picture, two front teeth missing, grinning like anything. His mum called him Mr Grin.

Is any of this a big deal? Not really, and that's exactly why it works. Winning isn't the problem here, looking daft in front of everyone is, and to a 6 year old those feel the same size.

The register is American, so it's Mom, cookies and second grade throughout. Nothing a listener will trip on.

What to read next

If this one lands well, there are plenty more. Heidi Heckelbeck and the Cookie Contest has her entering the school baking contest with the family chocolate chunk recipe and never having made a single cookie on her own.