Tippy Toler and the Fully Baked Magic Show
Page 4
“These six girls came up with the idea for a magic show to benefit the animal shelter. With a lot of hard work, practice, and creativity, they have pulled off a magic show to remember. But even more impressive than the sleight of hand you witnessed tonight is all the money they have raised for the animal shelter … and this!” She swept her arm to the side of the stage, where several teachers pulled back a curtain. Behind that curtain was the highest mound of dog food bags and cat food bags you’ve ever seen. It was like a mountain of pet food. The crowd erupted into applause once again.
CHAPTER 19
A curious return
“I have to hand it to you, Tippy.” My dad had his arm around my shoulder as my family walked out of the school. “You said your magic show wouldn’t be half-baked, and, boy, were you right!”
“This magic show was FULLY baked!” I said.
My dad smiled at me. Then he told us to go on ahead. He had left something at the school and said he would meet us at the car. The weird thing was, I didn’t see him carrying anything when he finally caught up with us.
CHAPTER 20
That’s a lot of moolah!
I have some exciting news to tell you. Our magic show raised way more money than we ever thought we would. When we totaled it all up, Missy Lane whistled and said, “That’s a lot of moolah.”
Moolah is another word for money. Here are some others:
Bread
Dough
Cabbage
Lettuce
Beans
Buckaroos
Cheese
Cheddar
Cash
So do you wanna know how much lettuce we made? Of course you do!
You might want to get some paper and a pencil. Or you can just use your brain if you’re good at that kind of thing.
Here’s the equation. We sold 120 tickets. Of those 120 people, 95 got the discounted ticket price for bringing a bag of food or a blanket. So, remember, regular tickets cost $5, and someone who brought food or a blanket got $2 off their ticket price.
95 x $3 = ________
That’s how much money we collected from people who bought discounted tickets.
120-95 = _______
That’s how many people paid $5 for a ticket. Now take that number of people and multiply it by $5, which equals _______.
That’s how much money we collected from people who bought regular tickets.
Add those two amounts of money. That’s how much we made from just the tickets.
But wait! We also sold bananas and lemonade, remember?
We sold 63 magically sliced bananas for $1 each. I know that you know that equals $63. But don’t forget that we had to buy the bananas. They cost $15 total. So you have to subtract what the bananas cost from how much we made selling them.
The lemonade only cost us $12 total. And we sold 92 cups of lemonade for $1 each. You can figure out how much we made on that.
Now add it all up. Want to see if you got the answer? Just keep reading!
CHAPTER 21
Something doesn’t add up here
Did you get $538? That’s great! And it’s correct! And it’s a lot of cheddar!
But here’s something weird. Mrs. Cruz told us the total was $638.
“Mrs. Cruz,” I said. “You may be a principal and everything, but you should probably check your math. We only raised $538.”
“Actually, $638 is correct,” she said, “and you did your math correctly, too.”
Penny said, “That doesn’t make any sense. One of us is wrong.”
“No … the reason it’s $638 is that we received a $100 check. A donation.”
“From who?” asked Missy Lane.
“It was anonymous,” said Mrs. Cruz.
“Anona-who?” I asked.
“Anonymous,” said Mrs. Cruz. “That means a person doesn’t want their name mentioned.”
“Ohhhhhhh,” I said. “Don’t worry. We won’t mention their name … so who was it?”
“I can’t say, but he was very impressed! He came up after the show and gave me the check.
Hmmmm … who do you figure would do a thing like that? It just so happens that I have an idea who.
CHAPTER 22
Anonymous is a rich guy after all
Mr. Anonymous was sitting in a chair. At least I thought he was Mr. Anonymous. I was about to find out. “Do you or do you not own a checkbook?”
“Of course I own a checkbook,” he said.
“Ah ha!” I said.
“Ah ha, what?”
“I’m asking the questions here,” I told him. “Now, I have a personal question to ask you, but please feel free to answer honestly. Otherwise, there will be trouble.”
“OK.”
“Are you rich?”
“Am I rich? I guess that depends on what you consider rich.”
“Alright. I consider $100 rich. Do you have at least $100?”
“Yes.”
“Double ah ha! You must be the guy.”
“What guy?”
“Come on ... admit it, Daddy. You are anonymous.”
“What?”
“You’re the one who gave Mrs. Cruz a $100 check, weren’t you?”
He didn’t answer.
“Weren’t you!?”
Slowly, he smiled and nodded his head. “Yes, that was me. I was very impressed with all you girls. And very proud of you, Tippy.”
“Oh, Daddy …”
CHAPTER 23
The return of an old friend who isn’t very old
That Saturday, we made a huge delivery to the animal shelter—870 pounds of dog and cat food, 22 blankets, and $638. The people at the animal shelter got all teary-cheeked. It was the biggest contribution of food they’d ever gotten. And it was the most money a group of kids had ever given them, too. The lady who ran the shelter said that to the TV guy who interviewed her.
Oh, did I forget to tell you about the TV guy? You don’t think I’m the kind of girl who would forget something as important as that, do you? They came to video the whole thing, and we saw it later that day on the news!
As we were about to go, we passed by one of the dog areas, and I heard a little whimper that sounded kind of familiar. I looked over and saw…you guessed it…Puppy Pup. The little guy who had shown up at our door that day. I begged my parents to let me hold him for just a minute or two. Those two minutes went by too fast. So they let me play with him for another little while. It was hard to leave him.
As we walked to the car, my dad said, “You all go ahead. I forgot something.” Can you believe it? He was going to go in there and give another anonymous check for $100. At least that’s what I thought. But I was wrong about that.
He came out of the animal shelter walking kind of funny. Kind of jerky-stepped. As he got a bit closer to the car, I could tell he was holding something. And then I saw what that something was. Puppy Pup!
“Oh, Daddy! Does this mean we can take him home?”
My dad nodded his head.
“Puppy Pup can live with us?”
He nodded again. “I figure that any girl who can plan a magic show like the one you pulled off can help us take care of one more pet in the house,” he said. He put Puppy Pup in my lap for the drive home. And that was the best magic trick I’ve seen anyone do. Ever.
The End
Pssst! Wanna know a secret?
by Julia and Marty Kramer
When we were coming up with the idea for these books, the name Tippy Toler didn’t just pop into our heads. We spent about 40 minutes thinking of lots of possible names for the main character. Then we narrowed it down to five finalists. (One of the others we liked was Penelope Moonwater.) We wrote all five on a sheet of paper and started asking friends and relatives which name they liked best. When we counted up the votes, Tippy Mississippi came out ahead.
But wait! As you know, this book isn’t called Tippy Mississippi and the Fully Baked Magic Show. So what happened?
We heard tha
t the name Tippy Mississippi was originally considered for the character that eventually became Hannah Montana. And even though they didn’t end up using that name, we didn’t want to seem like copycats.
We kept the name Tippy and paired it with the name Toler. We liked how saying the whole name led to the nickname of Tippy Toes.
Walla! Tippy Toler it is!
About the authors
Julia and Marty Kramer are a daughter-father writing team living in Austin, Texas. They enjoy riding bikes, reading, hiking, staring contests, basketball, dancing, making pizza, eating pizza, and speaking with foreign accents.
Book 2, Tippy Toler and the Super-Angry Eggs, will be available August 10, 2011
For more Tippy books and other fun stuff,
visit TippyToler.com