TAP-DANCE FEVER

Annabelle Applegate is the tap-dancingest girl in Fiddler’s Creek. She wears out her ma’s kitchen linoleum, makes a hole in the rickety schoolhouse floor and keeps Mrs. Pontoon’s hens from laying. Folks ask her to stop, but the song in her head makes her feet move—definitely, “Tap Dance Fever.” Folks complain to the Mayor, who tries putting “dance-defyin’ ” things in the road, taking her tap shoes, and then her work boots, but Annabelle just taps her way around the rubble, nails bottle caps to her daddy’s work boots and tapes pennies to her bare heels. Then Annabelle encounters a passel of rattlesnakes in the road, but they just join in the dancing. Problem solved: She becomes a tourist attraction with her dancing snakes, opens a dance studio and gives lessons—dancing away all the town’s troubles. The comic watercolor-and-gouache illustrations are kicky themselves, adding bounce and pep. Stand back, Radio City Rockettes: This silly fun will have kids dancing in the aisles. (Picture book. 5-8)