Ace Aceto is a funny guy. He is in the RI Comedy Hall of Fame. He has traveled around the country performing his stand up for conventions, businesses and private shows.

He also lived in Cranston from 2001-2006. So, he’s considered a local.

However, when his daughter Maddie lost a tooth, Aceto was unable to find the funny in the situation. That’s because Maddie had a litany of questions about the lost tooth.

“When Maddie was seven or eight, she lost one of her front teeth. It wasn’t the first one she lost, but for some reason she had a bunch of questions about the Tooth Fairy that night. Each time I just answered that I didn’t know and I guess she’d have to ask the Tooth Fairy. A few minutes later, she asked if we had markers and note cards,” Aceto recalled.

Not thinking anything of it, he told her where they were and went back to washing dishes and cleaning up after dinner.

“About an hour later she came down with eight to 10 cards filled out with interview questions for the Tooth Fairy to answer. By the time I put her to bed, she had 18 questions in all,” Aceto said.

He took a picture of all of the cards around her bed and posted on Facebook that the Tooth Fairy had a big job that night. Someone commented that it would make a cute children’s book.

“That’s where the idea came from. I spoke to a friend (Rena Nathanson, CEO of Bananagrams) and she suggested having blank cards for kids to fill out their own questions on. And the idea was born,” Aceto said.

As a 15-year-old girl, Maddie has mixed feelings about the book.

“She thinks it’s pretty cool sometimes, but like any teenage girl, there are times she’s embarrassed about it. I think she secretly likes the fame (lol). The owner of her dance school bought the book for her kids and asked me to sign it, and Maddie said she’d sign it too,” Aceto said.

Aceto’s other children aren’t jealous, because he told them he already has ideas for books about them from when they were little.

The book itself has always been in the back of Aceto’s mind.

“Well, Maddie is 15 so it’s taken a while. Look, I didn’t write the Harry Potter series. It’s one of those things where it sat in my head for a while until the summer of 2021. I was at Scout Camp with my son and had time to sit down, write an outline, write the story, and edit it down,” he said.

He also did research by speaking to other local authors (Corey Anne Abreau and Kerri LaRoche Newman) about their process of writing a children’s book and some internet searches about appropriate vocabulary and word count for the target age range.

“Then I needed to find an illustrator. I was talking to my friends Carla & Brian Mulhern and they reminded me that Carla’s son, Jonathan Izzard is a great artist. While he hadn’t illustrated a book before, I had seen his artwork before and it was amazing. Since I was a first time author I thought it would only be fitting to work with a first time illustrator. It took him the summer and early fall of 2022 to finish the illustrations and Jonathan did an awesome job,” Aceto said.

Aceto is pleased with the reactions the book has received.

“Feedback has been great so far. Most reviews and people I speak to love the fact that there’s an emotional connection. Because not only is it based on a true story which they can see in some of Maddie’s actual cards, but also the fact that children can fill out the blank cards included and ask the their own questions of The Tooth Fairy,” he said.

Aceto has a signing/reading of “Maddie Loses a Tooth” scheduled for Jan. 28 at the Comedy Park at 11 a.m. He will have hardcover and paperback books available.