Books like Ganesha's Sweet Tooth
By Sanjay Patel
For the kid obsessed with sweets and the kid who's ever broken something they loved, watching Ganesha turn a snapped tusk into something worthwhile lands close to home. Bright, bold, funny, and a little irreverent, with warmth underneath the humor.
Ganesha breaks a tusk and finds it useful. Shrek! by William Steig keeps a hero exactly as ugly as he started, and happier for it.
Ganesha learns his broken tusk still has a use. In The Frog Prince, Continued by Jon Scieszka, the happy ending itself turns out to be the problem worth solving.
The House Takes a Vacation by Jacqueline Davies keeps that same funny-magic logic, but the mischief belongs to the whole house instead of one elephant-headed kid.
Cursed bald at birth by the wicked fairy Malevola, a princess grows up and wishes for golden hair — only to find that too much hair brings its own troubles.
The joy is louder and wordless here. Robo-Sauce by Adam Rubin ends with a fold-out page that turns the whole book into a robot.
Same appetite for sweets driving the plot forward, though The Funny Little Woman by Arlene Mosel sends its heroine underground chasing her dinner instead.
Ganesha gets help from a wise poet; the rabbit in Zomo the Rabbit: A Trickster Tale from West Africa by Gerald McDermott has to out-think a god on his own.
Less mythology, more everyday stubbornness, but This Moose Belongs to Me by Oliver Jeffers has the same funny standoff between what you want and what actually happens.
Reach for Hildilid's Night by Cheli Durán Ryan when your kid liked watching someone rage against something they can't control, and lose.
No jokes here, and barely any words. Rules of Summer by Shaun Tan sits with the quieter, stranger side of a broken tusk turning out okay.
Quieter magic than a broken tusk, but Snowmen at Night by Caralyn Buehner gives kids that same secret-life-of-things wonder at bedtime.
In a tiny town where every meal falls from the sky, life is delicious until the food weather turns dangerous, growing bigger and wilder until the townspeople fear for their safety.
