Baby Teeth by Zoje Stage

Baby Teeth

by Zoje Stage

If there is any book out there that makes you glad you're not a parent, it would be Baby Teeth, which explores psychopathy in a 7 year-old little girl who is out to harm/kill her mother.

Zoje Stage did a great job of telling this story from both the mother's and daughter's perspectives. She explores the thoughts that go through a parent's mind when they struggle over the guilt about having a child who is not the child they expected they would have, and what to do about it. Hanna, the daughter, tells her side of things in a literary way. The visuals and connections are that of a child, but the prose doesn't cause the reader to feel like they're reading a middle grade novel. And Hanna is devious, and her reasons for acting out against her mother are often creepy.

All of the characters are deliciously flawed and you both like and dislike all of them, but I think you lean more toward dislike for all three: Hanna, Suzette, and Alex, the father who is ignorant/oblivious to the ways in which Suzette has to put up with Hanna's malice.

Stage doesn't sugar coat what happens to Hanna as a result of her actions, and I love that. This book asks the question, "Is the way we parent today helpful or harmful, and to what extent are people able to parent without giving up/being unable to sustain the facade of a happy family."

Baby Teeth gets 4 stars from me, and will serve as a model for a future story I have been thinking about where the main character is nonverbal, like Hanna.