There are two times in my life (so far) that I’ve been a mouse.
The first was a role in a play in elementary school. My mother made my ears out of bra cups.
The second time I played a mouse, the role was far more discreet, and there was no costume. For the past five years or so, I’ve been La Petite Souris for my Franco-American son.
La Petite Souris (the Little Mouse) is the French equivalent of the Tooth Fairy. As the name suggests, this means that French kids’ teeth aren’t taken by a beautiful fairy, but by a sneaky little mouse.
Still, I imagine her as beautiful. I’ve always pictured her as an adorable, Beatrix Potter-style gray mouse wearing a pink fairy dress. (The closest I’ve come to this look is wearing my fuzzy gray bathrobe on colder nights of the year.)
That said, despite the feminine article “La” in front of her name, La Petite Souris could just as well be a boy; souris, the French word for mouse, is always feminine. Even Mickey himself is une souris. But it seems like most representations of La Petite Souris portray her as a female, too, maybe due to the origin of her current representation (more on that later) or the influence of the Tooth Fairy in global media.
You might be wondering—do French kids question things when the Tooth Fairy shows up in Anglo-Saxon movies, books, or TV shows? Based on what I’ve seen from my son and his French friends, not really. Personally, I’ve always told my son that different beings have tooth-collecting duties in different countries. So, the Tooth Fairy collected my teeth when I was a kid living in the U.S., and she comes to collect his American cousins’ teeth, but he and his friends here in France have the mouse.
Like the Tooth Fairy, La Petite Souris leaves something behind—and don’t worry, I don’t mean mouse droppings. The tooth-money exchange varies from household to household, but based on conversations I’ve had with my French parent friends, the usual rate tends to be 2 to 5 euros per tooth. When La Petite Souris visits our apartment, she usually leaves 2 euros, although on rare occasions, that might go up to 5 if the tooth was a particularly tough one to get out.
Interestingly, in some families, La Petite Souris leaves a piece of candy instead, which I find a bit strange, like dentists giving lollipops to kids after a tooth cleaning. Of course, La Petite Souris isn’t responsible for cleaning your teeth. She’s just a magical mouse, so she can do whatever she wants.
The Origins of La Petite Souris
It’s generally believed that in France, at least, La Petite Souris was inspired by Madame d’Aulnoy’s 17th century fairy tale “La Bonne Petite Souris” (“The Good Little Mouse”), although in that story, the mouse is a fairy who’s transformed herself into a mouse and, true to the violence found in many fairy tales, she makes the story’s villainous king lose four teeth by pushing him out of a tree, rather than collecting teeth lost naturally by little children.
Nowadays, there are a number of French and French-language children’s books which have told the story of La Petite Souris in a variety of different ways, including La véritable histoire de la petite souris by Marie-Anne Boucher and La petite souris by Olga Lacaye. One of my French parent friends even remembers her daughter loving a book where La Petite Souris works at a dentist’s office! As you can see from sources like this page on French book website Babelio, there are lots of others out there—and that’s not even a definitive list.
La Petite Souris hasn’t appeared in as many films as she has books. A version of La Petite Souris makes a cameo in the movie Rise of the Guardians, but interestingly, that mouse is dressed as a boy, which seems to suggest he’s more of a reference to the Spanish version of the Tooth Mouse, who I’ll talk about a little later on. In the award-winning animated film Ernest & Celestine, which is an adaptation of a series of Belgian children’s books, Celestine the mouse works as a sort of Petite Souris, collecting bear cubs’ lost baby teeth. That said, she’s never explicitly called La Petite Souris and she’s not the only mouse to do this. There are some other movies about this particular French fable, but these also often tend to be productions from other countries that were adapted for French audiences. This includes a 2006 release called La Petite Souris, which explicitly references the Spanish Tooth Mouse instead.
On the other hand, there are a lot of Petite Souris products out there that feature the French version of the Tooth Mouse. These include stuffed animals and decorative boxes for storing baby teeth. Not everyone buys these, though. Despite my enthusiasm for La Petite Souris, my family and I never have, for one. But there is a market out there. When I asked her about La Petite Souris, one of my French mom friends excitedly showed me the tooth box she used for her daughter. It was a pretty little wooden one, with a drawing of La Petite Souris on top, wearing a dress and bearing fairy wings.
Maybe unsurprisingly, Petite Souris merch tends to be fairly expensive. Those creating it know that they’re tapping into parents’ love for their kids, as well as nostalgia for their own childhoods. La Petite Souris has been a part of life for generations of French children. Each of the parent friends I asked had their own stories about how their own parents and even grandparents played along, just like we do today.
Why Have a Tooth Mouse Instead of a Tooth Fairy?
The concept of a Tooth Mouse probably dates back even farther than Madame d’Aulnoy’s fairy tale. But finding the origin of La Petite Souris—or the Tooth Fairy, for that matter—is surprisingly complicated. I’ve read that no one has studied the matter until fairly recently. Even if there was extensive Petite Souris scholarship, though, it’s likely that it would still be impossible to pinpoint her true origins, as is the case with most stories that were passed down through generations and only written down or recorded long after.
One thing that does seem certain is that many cultures have some kind of mouse involved with children’s lost teeth. The general consensus seems to be that this could have begun as an aspirational thing. Parents want their kids to have strong, healthy adult teeth, and who better to model teeth after than a rodent with big (well, for their size), healthy teeth, like a mouse?
In fact, according to historian Kathryn Kane, even Anglo-Saxon cultures had a Tooth Mouse (or in some cases, a Tooth Squirrel, an equally adorable alternative), until the trend turned towards fairies, probably around the early 20th century. From what we know, long ago, children didn’t leave a lost tooth under a pillow for the mouse or squirrel to find, but rather tossed it somewhere the rodent would probably find it, like a thatched roof. In exchange, they’d get strong teeth, but no money or sweets.
Interestingly, there is one Tooth Mouse whose origins are a little less murky. Although he already existed in folklore, the Tooth Mouse in Spain and many other Spanish-speaking countries has an official story and name: El Ratoncito Pérez (Perez the Mouse). Sometimes also called el Ratón Pérez, his tale was first written down by author Luis Coloma in the late 19th century, as a gift for Spain’s young Prince Alfonso XIII. The story would be published in novel form a few years later, in 1902.
When Do Kids Stop Believing in La Petite Souris?
Whatever we know (or don’t) about their history, it’s a sad fact that the Tooth Fairy, La Petite Souris, and other tooth-loving creatures aren’t a part of kids’ realities for very long. According to sources like French parenting site Mpedia, children can start to doubt that La Petite Souris is real at around age 6 or 7. But among my French parent friends, most said that their kids stopped believing in La Petite Souris at around 9.
This seems to check out historically as well, at least in one famous example. El Ratoncito Pérez’s story was written for Prince Alfonso XIII when he was 8 years old, so it seems like even more than a hundred years ago, kids believed in a mouse that took their teeth at least until they were that age.
My son has always had a big imagination, and he holds on tight to family traditions and childhood memories, so it took him a little longer to let go. At 10, he’s finally accepted the rumors he’s heard for years. A few months ago, he told me and his dad that he knows there’s not really a Petite Souris and that we’re the ones leaving the money. (He asked less questions than I would have expected about what, exactly, we do with his teeth.)
It was a bittersweet moment. On the one hand, I was relieved I’d no longer have to be careful about accidentally revealing the truth, but on the other, well, this sort of thing reminds you that your kid is growing up.
Some parents I know have told their child, “Okay, since you know there’s no Petite Souris, the next time you lose a tooth, we’ll just give you the money.” Others stop the practice altogether. But the more I thought about it, the more I wanted to keep being La Petite Souris, even though the illusion is gone.
So, I still tell my son to put his lost teeth under his pillow for La Petite Souris. But now, we exchange a wink or a laugh. Sometimes, when my son sees that a tooth is gone and a 2 euro coin is in its place, he tells me how impressed he is that I managed to do it without waking him up. And I usually joke, “It wasn’t me—it was La Petite Souris.”
You might think I’m a bit delusional, or trying to keep my mouse-playing skills sharp until another role comes along. Or maybe I’m addicted to the thrill of sneaking a tooth from under my son’s pillow and slipping a coin in its place without him realizing. I have to admit, all of this might be true. But the biggest reason I’m still La Petite Souris is because it’s my way to show my son an important truth in life: Sometimes, there’s magic in the world, and other times, it’s up to us to choose to make it.
I’d write more about this but I have to stop here. There’s another tooth waiting underneath my son’s pillow.
Alysa Salzberg is an American writer, worrier, teacher, travel planner, and cookie enthusiast who’s lived in Paris, France, for nearly two decades. Author of Hearts at Dawn, a historical fantasy novel set during the 1870-1871 Siege of Paris, she often shares things she loves about life and history in the City of Light on her blog here, and on Instagram @lamarquisedecarabas.
