Chris Keeling, age 7, of Monroe, Connecticut, for his question:

What is an eyetooth?

In a few years from now, you should have two eyeteeth in your top jaw. In the very front of the jaw there are four nice little roundish teeth. They are meant for biting off smallish pieces of food and they are called the incisors. On each side of the incisors, there is a slightly longer, more tapered tooth. These two are the canine teeth  ¬and if a person's canine teeth were very long they would look somewhat like fangs.

There are two canines in a person's first set of teeth. When you get to be about II or 12, you lose your first canines and get a second pair. The second canines sometimes are called the eyeteeth. Nobody knows why they have this name. But some people think that by the time you cut your eyeteeth you should be smart enough to see what's going on in the world. But, of course, a lot of young persons are this smart long before they cut their eyeteeth.