FLYING FEET

In their seventh collective appearance, the multispecies residents of Mud Flat put on a show after getting fleeced, skinned, or otherwise bilked by a pair of tap-dancing con artists. Everyone’s in a tizzy when Tonya and Ted tippety-tap into town, offering lessons and organizing rehearsals for a grand performance. Having two left feet, Stan is relegated to selling tickets, making the lemonade—and becoming the new impresario when the terpsichorean twosome suddenly skips town. As always, the Mud Flatters rise to the occasion, and the show goes on—to a triumph climaxed by the return of the repentant Tonya and Ted. Arranged into brief chapters and festooned with loosely drawn, tongue-in-cheek scenes of unpracticed, but enthusiastic performers, this new episode will bring down the house—or, at least, bring on chuckles from recent easy reader graduates. (Fiction. 7-9)