Tip-Top Tappin' Mom! Read online

  Table of Contents

  Title Page

  Dedication

  Copyright Page

  Chapter 1

  Chapter 2

  Chapter 3

  Chapter 4

  Chapter 5

  Chapter 6

  Chapter 7

  Chapter 8

  Chapter 9

  Chapter 10

  Chapter 11

  Chapter 12

  Chapter 13

  About the Author

  For my mom, naturally.—NK

  For Alyse and Rauni,

  two tip-top moms.—J&W

  GROSSET & DUNLAP

  Published by the Penguin Group

  Penguin Group (USA) Inc., 375 Hudson Street, New York,

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  Text copyright © 2009 by Nancy Krulik. Illustrations copyright © 2009 by John and Wendy. All rights reserved. Published by Grosset & Dunlap, a division of Penguin Young Readers Group, 345 Hudson Street, New York, New York 10014. GROSSET &

  DUNLAP is a trademark of Penguin Group (USA) Inc. .S.A.

  Library of Congress Control Number: 2008032952

  eISBN : 978-1-101-02911-4

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  Chapter 1

  “What a cool baseball jersey!” Katie Carew complimented her best friend Jeremy Fox. It was Friday afternoon. Cherrydale Elementary School’s fourth-graders had all just run out onto the playground for recess.

  “Thanks,” Jeremy said to Katie. “I got it yesterday when my dad and I were at the sporting-goods store in the mall. We were looking for a Mother’s Day present for my mom.”

  “But you got the present,” Katie pointed out.

  “We bought one for my mom, too,” Jeremy assured her.

  “Do you really think your mom will want a baseball shirt for Mother’s Day?” Suzanne Lock, Katie’s other best friend, asked Jeremy.

  “She’ll love it,” Jeremy assured Suzanne. “My mom’s a huge Cherrydale Porcupines fan.”

  Katie knew that was true. She’d been to baseball games with Mrs. Fox. Jeremy’s mom screamed louder than anyone.

  “If you say so,” Suzanne told Jeremy. “I just know that my mom likes more girly presents for Mother’s Day.”

  “Like what?” Jeremy asked.

  “Every year I get her a big bouquet of roses,” Suzanne told him.

  “Speaking of roses . . .” George Brennan began with a big smile on his face. “How did the big rose greet the little rose?”

  “How?” Katie asked him.

  “Hi, Bud!” George exclaimed. He laughed at his own joke.

  Katie laughed, too. She loved George’s jokes.

  But not everyone did. “That’s so corny,” Suzanne told him.

  “You mean thorny,” George corrected her. He started laughing all over again.

  Suzanne rolled her eyes. “You know what your Mother’s Day gift should be, George?” she asked.

  “What?” George wondered.

  “A day without jokes,” Suzanne told him.

  “My mom likes my jokes,” George insisted. “Besides, we’re taking her out for brunch for Mother’s Day.”

  “Lucky you,” George’s best friend, Kevin Camilleri, told him. “My big brother Ian and I have to make breakfast for my mom and then serve it to her in bed. It was my dad’s idea.”

  “We tried that last year,” Emma Weber told Kevin. “But the twins jumped in bed with my mom and spilled her tray. She spent the rest of Mother’s Day washing her sheets and buying a new pillow because hers was soaked through with orange juice.”

  Katie could picture that. Emma W.’s twin brothers, Tyler and Timmy, were toddlers. They could be a real handful.

  “So this year, we’re just getting my mom a camera,” Emma W. continued.

  “My whole family is going to that new rock-climbing place for Mother’s Day,” Mandy Banks told the kids. “It was my mom’s choice. She’s always wanted to try it.”

  “Rock climbing sounds like a lot more fun than making toast and cereal,” Kevin said with a frown. “I wish I had your mom!”

  Katie gulped. Kevin had just done something terrible. He’d made a wish!

  “You do not wish that, Kevin!” she shouted. “You don’t wish that at all.”

  The fourth-graders all stared at her.

  “Katie Kazoo, what’s with you?” George asked, using the way-cool nickname he’d given Katie in third grade.

  Katie didn’t know how to answer that. Her friends must have thought she’d gone nuts. But Katie wasn’t nuts. She just knew that wishes didn’t always come true the way you wanted them to.

  Wishes could be bad, bad things.

  Chapter 2

  The whole wish mess had started one horrible day back in third grade. That day, Katie had lost the football game for her team. Then she’d splashed mud all over her favorite jeans. But the worst part was when Katie let out a loud burp—right in front of the whole class. Talk about embarrassing!

  That night, Katie had wished she could be anyone but herself. There must have been a shooting star overhead when she made the wish, because the very next day the magic wind came.

  The magic wind was like a really powerful tornado that blew around Katie and no one else. It was so strong, it could blow her right out of her body . . . and into someone else’s!

  The first time the magic wind appeared, it turned Katie into Speedy, the hamster who was the class pet. Katie spent the whole morning going around and around on a hamster wheel and chewing on Speedy’s wooden chew sticks.

  And that wasn’t even the worst part. Things got really bad when she escaped from Speedy’s cage and ran into the boys’ locker room. That was when Katie landed inside George Brennan’s stinky sneaker! P.U.! Katie sure was glad when the magic wind came back and switcherooed her into a kid again!

  After that, the magic wind came again and again. One time it turned Katie into Kevin, right in the middle of his karate competition. Katie had tried to break a board in half with her foot. Keeyah! She’d missed the board completely and landed right on her rear end in front of everyone!

  Another time, the magic wind turned Katie into a clown fish at the Cherrydale Aquarium. She’d had a great time swimming around in the big tank—until a shark with huge, sharp teeth got a little too close! Katie was really glad when she changed back into a fourth
-grader on dry land again!

  Katie never knew when the magic wind would strike or who it would switcheroo her into. That was why Katie hated wishes so much. They only brought trouble. But she couldn’t explain that to her friends. They wouldn’t believe her, anyway. Katie wouldn’t have believed it, either, if it didn’t keep happening to her.

  Still, she had to say something. Her friends were all staring at her.

  “I just mean, you love your own mother, Kevin,” Katie said quickly. “And you wouldn’t trade her for anything.”

  “I guess,” Kevin admitted. “But it would be fun to go rock climbing.”

  “I can’t wait to go,” Mandy told him. “They put you in this harness thing and . . .”

  Phew. Katie’s friends were so interested in what Mandy was saying that they forgot how Katie had freaked out about Kevin’s wish. That was one problem solved.

  But Katie still had another big problem to deal with. She had no idea what to give her mom for Mother’s Day. And that was just two days away.

  Chapter 3

  Unfortunately, Katie wasn’t going to be able to solve that problem today. She had been hoping that her dad could take her shopping for a Mother’s Day gift that evening. But when she got home, Katie found her grandmother waiting for her in the living room.

  “Hi there, Kit-Kat,” Katie’s grandmother greeted her.

  “Hi, Grandma,” Katie said. “I didn’t know you were coming over.”

  “Your dad had a late meeting, and your mom’s busy at the bookstore tonight. So they called and asked me to come hang out with you,” her grandmother explained.

  Katie loved that her grandmother said they were hanging out together instead of calling it babysitting. After all, a fourth-grade girl was no baby.

  “So what do you want to do?” her grandmother asked.

  Katie shrugged. What she had wanted to do was go shopping at the mall. But Katie’s grandmother didn’t have a car. She rode a motorcycle. Katie wasn’t allowed to ride on it.

  “We could watch a movie or something,” Katie suggested.

  Her grandmother smiled. “Actually, I brought something even better,” she said, pulling a few disks out of her backpack. “I just had some of my old home movies made into DVDs.”

  “Home movies?” Katie asked.

  Her grandmother nodded. “Of your mother when she was a little girl.”

  Katie grinned. She loved hearing stories about when her parents were little. But seeing her mom as a kid would be even more fun. “Great! Do you have any movies from when she was my age?”

  Her grandmother searched through the DVDs, reading each of the labels. “She’s about your age in this one,” she said. “Let’s pop it in.”

  “Speaking of pop . . . can we make some popcorn?” Katie asked. “We have it in the cabinet.”

  “Definitely,” her grandmother agreed. “What’s a movie without popcorn?”

  A few minutes later, Katie and her grandmother were sitting on the couch with a big bowl of hot, buttery popcorn between them. Katie watched as a fuzzy image came onto the TV screen. It seemed to be a theater of some sort.

  “Oh, I remember this,” Katie’s grandmother said with a smile. “It was Wendy’s first tap-dancing recital.”

  “My mom tap dances?” Katie asked her.

  “She used to,” her grandmother explained. “She took lessons for a while. But when we moved to a new town, she stopped. There was only one dance school, and they didn’t give tap classes. Oh, she was so sad.”

  That made Katie sad, too. She would hate to have to give up her cooking classes or her art classes because her family moved. Come to think of it, she wouldn’t want to move at all. Katie liked her neighborhood and her friends.

  “Oh, look, the show is starting!” Katie’s grandmother exclaimed.

  Katie watched as the fourth-grade girls began tap dancing their way onto the stage. The first girl was wearing a big green tutu. Her crown had a green pointy thing coming out of the top.

  “What’s that?” Katie asked.

  “It’s supposed to be a stem,” Katie’s grandmother explained. “She’s dressed as a green pepper.”

  “A what?” Katie asked, surprised.

  “A pepper,” Katie’s grandmother repeated. “The girls were all supposed to be different vegetables in a salad.”

  Katie started to giggle. “A tap-dancing salad?”

  Katie’s grandmother laughed, too. “I know, it sounds silly. But they were so cute.” She pointed to a girl in a purple tutu and crown. “She’s supposed to be a cabbage.”

  The cabbage girl was followed by a dancer dressed in an orange leotard and tights. “She’s a carrot, right?” Katie asked.

  Her grandmother nodded. “Here comes your mom.”

  Sure enough, Katie’s mother—or at least a fourth-grade version of her—flashed onto the screen. She was wearing red tights, a red tutu, and a red leotard.

  “Mom’s the tomato!” Katie exclaimed.

  “Exactly,” her grandmother replied.

  Katie watched as her mom twirled around on the stage. “Mom was a pretty good tap dancer,” Katie said.

  “She was a great tap dancer,” her grandmother corrected her. “Nothing made your mom happier than tap dancing back then. I felt really terrible when she had to give it up.”

  Suddenly Katie got one of her great ideas. She knew just what to get her mom for Mother’s Day.

  “I’m so glad you came over today, Grandma!” Katie exclaimed. She reached over and gave her grandmother a huge hug.

  Whoops! The whole bowl of popcorn flipped over.

  “Uh-oh!” Katie gulped.

  “It’s no big deal,” her grandmother assured her. “I’ll just get the vacuum.”

  “I don’t think you’ll need it.” Katie giggled and pointed to the spilled popcorn. Her cocker spaniel, Pepper, was already eating it all up.

  “I guess he was hungry,” Katie’s grandmother said. “Come to think of it, so am I. What do you want for dinner?”

  Katie looked up at the TV screen. Katie’s mom, the tomato, was tap dancing with the carrot, the pepper, and the cabbage.

  “Suddenly I’m in the mood for a great big salad,” she said with a giggle.

  Chapter 4

  “Happy Mother’s Day!” Katie shouted as she bounded into the kitchen on Sunday morning.

  “Ruff! Ruff!” Pepper barked as he followed Katie.

  Mrs. Carew looked up from her coffee and began to laugh. “Thank you very much,” she said. “Both of you.”

  Katie grinned. Pepper wagged his tail.

  “This is for you.” Katie put a big box down on the table.

  “Wow!” Mrs. Carew exclaimed. “What a pretty bow. Did you wrap it yourself ?”

  Katie shook her head. “Daddy did it.”

  Mrs. Carew looked over at Katie’s dad. “Great job,” she complimented him.

  “Thanks,” he said.

  By now, Katie was practically bursting with excitement. “Forget the wrapping paper. Open it!”

  Mrs. Carew laughed as she tore the wrapping paper and opened the box. Then she looked inside. “Tap shoes?” she asked.

  Katie nodded excitedly. “And Daddy and I went to Miss Ricky’s School of Dance yesterday. We signed you up for tap-dancing classes.”

  “But why?” her mother asked.

  “Grandma said you were really sad when you had to give up tap-dancing lessons,” Katie explained. “Now you can take them again.”

  “That was a long time ago, Katie,” Mrs. Carew said slowly.

  Katie looked at her mom. “Don’t you like my present?” she asked.

  “Of course I do,” Mrs. Carew assured Katie. She slipped the shoes on and tied the ribbons in bows.

  “Do they fit?” Katie asked hopefully.

  “Perfectly,” her mother said. She stood up and began moving her feet back and forth. The shoes made a swishing noise on the kitchen floor.

  Then Katie’s mom clicked her heel. Ta
p.

  She pointed her toe. Tap.

  Heel tap. Toe tap. Heel. Toe.

  A big smile formed on Katie’s mother’s face. “I’d forgotten how much fun it was to tap dance,” she said.

  “Can you still do the tomato dance?” Katie asked her.

  Katie’s mom seemed surprised. “How did you know about that?” she asked.

  “Grandma showed me the movie of your recital,” Katie told her. “You were the best one in the whole salad!”

  Katie’s mom and dad started to laugh. So did Katie. That had sounded really funny.

  Katie’s mom twirled around in a little circle. “It will be so much fun to dance again!” she exclaimed.

  Katie grinned. She’d done it! She’d given her mom the best Mother’s Day present ever.

  Chapter 5

  Katie couldn’t wait to tell her friends about the great gift she’d gotten for her mother. But when she walked into class 4A on Monday morning, she realized no one was thinking about Mother’s Day anymore. The kids were all too curious about what had happened to their classroom.

  Mr. Guthrie always decorated class 4A in a fun way. But this time, he’d gone absolutely crazy. There were maps everywhere.

  When Katie looked up at the ceiling, she saw a big map of the North Pole.

  When she looked down at the floor, she saw a map of the South Pole.

  When she looked in front of her, she saw a map of Canada.

  When she looked behind her, she saw a map of South America. It was kind of like standing in a giant globe.

  “What in the world . . . ?” Emma Stavros began.

  “Exactly.” Mr. G. laughed.

  “Are we studying foreign countries?” Kadeem Carter asked.

  “Yes,” Mr. G. agreed. “Also mountain ranges, rivers, oceans . . .”

  “That’s like studying the whole world,” Andy Epstein said.