Tip-Top Tappin' Mom!

Table of Contents

 

 

 

For my mom, naturally.—NK
For Alyse and Rauni,
two tip-top moms.—J&W

GROSSET & DUNLAP
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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

“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.

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.