Tip-Top Tappin' Mom! (6 page)

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Authors: Nancy Krulik

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Katie’s mother sighed and shook her head. “Come on,” she said. “Let’s go home. I need to get out of this place.”
Chapter 11
The next day it was very quiet at Katie’s house. There was no tapping, stomping, or clapping. It was the perfect place to study. That made Katie very sad.
“Your mom’s not going to dance at all anymore?” Emma W. asked her. She and George had come over to look at some of Katie’s dad’s stamp albums.
Katie shook her head. “Mom put the tap shoes away. She says she’s looking for a new hobby.”
“She should try archery,” George suggested. “That’s my dad’s hobby. He’s teaching
me
how to shoot arrows now.”
“That’s really cool,” Emma W. said.
“Archery is an Olympic sport,” George said.
“The Olympics started in Greece,” Emma W. told him. “And Greece is located in what sea?”
“The Mediterranean!” George exclaimed happily.
“You got it,” Emma W. said with a smile.
Katie wished she could be as interested as her friends were in geography. But right now all she could think about was how her mom had stopped dancing—and how it had all been Katie’s fault.
“I have to get going,” Emma W. said. “I promised my mom I’d be home early today.”
“I guess I should go home, too,” George said. “But this has been great. Those stamps really make studying geography fun. You should bring one of your dad’s stamp albums to school tomorrow. Then everyone in our class can study with it.”
“I don’t know . . .” Katie began.
“It would totally give our class an advantage over 4B, Katie Kazoo,” George said. “That stamp album would be our secret weapon!”
Katie thought about that. “I guess I could bring one album,” she said. “But just for tomorrow.”
“Bring the one with stamps from South America,” Emma W. suggested. She slipped on a little pink sweater.
“That’s pretty,” Katie told her.
“Thanks,” Emma W. replied. “My mom and I made it together. She’s teaching me how to knit.”
“Cool,” Katie said.
“It’s fun,” Emma W. said. “And it’s something special I do with my mom. She doesn’t knit with anyone else. Not my sister Lacey or any of my brothers.”
Katie knew that must make Emma W. really happy. With so many kids in her house, it was hard for Emma W. to get special time with her mom.
Suddenly a big smile flashed on Katie’s face.
Hooray! Katie Kazoo had just gotten one of her great ideas!
Tap . . . tap. . . shuffle.
The next morning, Katie danced her way into class 4A.
“What are you doing?” Emma W. asked her.
“Tap dancing,” Katie explained. “My mom is teaching me.”
“I thought you said your mom wasn’t taking tap-dancing lessons anymore,” Emma W. said.
“She isn’t,” Katie said. “But I asked her if she could teach
me
to dance. I thought it could be our special hobby. Like the way you and your mom knit. And George and his dad do archery.”
“Cool,” Emma W. said.
“My mom taught me a few steps,” Katie said. “We might even make up a dance together. Tap dancing is fun.”
“Are you going to be in the Tap-Off ?” Emma W. asked her.
Katie shrugged. “My mom still doesn’t want to. But maybe she’ll change her mind.”
Just then, George walked over to where and Emma W. and Katie were sitting. “Did you bring the secret weapon?” he asked her.
Katie patted her backpack. “It’s right here. We have to be careful with it. My dad would be really upset if anything happened to his stamps.”
George smiled. “The stamp album will be fine,” he said. “What could happen?”
Chapter 12
Katie could lose the stamp album.
That
was what could happen.
“This is soooo not good,” Katie told a group of her friends during lunch. “I promised my dad that I wouldn’t let anything happen to any of his stamps, and now I’ve lost a whole book of them!”
“Calm down,” Emma W. said. “They couldn’t have just disappeared. When did you have them last?”
“I don’t remember,” Katie told her. “I had them in the classroom early in the morning. And you and I were looking at them in the library. But after that, I’m not sure.”
“We’ll just have to go everywhere you went today and look for them,” George said.
“But I was all over the school,” Katie said. “The library, the gym, our classroom. I was in the bathroom, too. Twice.”
Kevin took out a piece of paper and a pen.
“What are you doing?” Katie asked him.
“I’m drawing a map of the school,” Kevin explained. “We’ll follow the map and look for the book during recess.”
“But recess is so short,” Katie said. “We won’t have time to search the whole school.”
“That’s okay,” Kevin said. “I’m splitting the map into four parts. I’ll look in the north part of the school. George will look in the south. Emma will look in the east, and you can look west.”
“School geography!” George exclaimed.
“This will be fun!” Emma W. added.
Katie sighed. She didn’t care if school geography was fun. She just wanted it to work.
Right after the kids finished their lunch, they started their search. Katie raced to the west side of the school. First, she stopped in the girls’ room, where she’d gone just before gym.
She searched all the stalls, but the stamp album wasn’t there.
Then she ran into the gym, where class 4A had played class 4B in basketball . . . and lost. No, the stamp album wasn’t there, either.
Finally, Katie went into the library. That was the last place she actually remembered looking at the stamp album.
“Hi, Katie,” Ms. Folio, the school librarian, greeted her. “Have you come to spend recess in the library?”
Katie shook her head. “I’m looking for my dad’s stamp album. Have you seen it?”
“No,” Ms. Folio said. “Are you sure you had it in here?”
“Yes,” Katie assured her. “Emma and I were looking at it at the table near the window.”
Ms. Folio thought for a minute. “Mr. Keaton’s first-grade class was in here right after your class left. Maybe one of the first-graders saw it.”
“Do you think Mr. Keaton would let me ask the kids if they did?” Katie asked. “It’s very important. My dad will be so upset if I don’t get his stamps back.”
“I’m sure Mr. Keaton will let you look for the stamp album.” Ms. Folio looked up at the clock. “The first grade is having a snack now. They should be in their classroom.”
“Thanks, Ms. Folio,” Katie said as she dashed out of the library and ran farther west down the hall to Mr. Keaton’s room.
The first-graders were having crackers and milk when Katie knocked on Mr. Keaton’s door.
“Katie,” Mr. Keaton greeted her. “What a surprise. Why aren’t you out on the playground with the other fourth-graders?”
“I lost something important,” Katie told him. “I’m spending recess looking for it. Ms. Folio said one of your kids might have seen it.”
“What did you lose?” Mr. Keaton asked.
“My dad’s stamp album,” Katie told him. “It’s a black binder filled with pages of stamps.”
“Did any of you see a black binder?” Mr. Keaton asked his class.
A small girl with a head of blond curls raised her hand shyly. “I found a binder in the library.” She pulled it out of her desk.
“That’s it!” Katie exclaimed happily.
“This binder has lots of stickers,” the little girl said.
“That’s what I thought at first, too,” Katie said. “But they’re really stamps from other countries.”

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