Tip-Top Tappin' Mom! Read Online Free PDF Page A

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