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Authors: Nancy Krulik

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BOOK: Tip-Top Tappin' Mom!
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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 pop
corn
?” 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.
Tap
.
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.
BOOK: Tip-Top Tappin' Mom!
13.94Mb size Format: txt, pdf, ePub
ads

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