Gotta Love It! Olivia Dances for Joy by Natalie Shaw

OLIVIA AND HER FRIENDS WERE HAVING A GREAT TIME AT GRANDMA'S DANCE CLASS.

"SHOW ME YOUR HAPPY DANCE, KIDS!" GRANDMA SAYS.

Olivia and her buddies love to lark around and step out to solo with Grandma's gregarious dancers, but their minds, especially Olivia's, was set on the upcoming Maywood Dance Contest, where the Prancer Dancers always seem to win first place. Olivia is determined that this year things are going to be different. What she has to do is to shape her troupe of casual dancers into a winning team in time for the big contest.

Olivia can just see how wonderful it would be to win! There would be paparazzi, snapping pictures of them for posters and periodicals. They will be famous!

But the Prancer Dancers are practically professional, and to win against them is going to take a super-professional effort, and Olivia frets that her group just doesn't take the whole thing seriously enough. Winning is going to take hard work!

And with only five of them, they will need three more dancers to rival the Prancers.

WHERE WILL WE FIND THREE MORE?

Olivia sets forth on an emergency talent hunt. Who does she know that can dance?

She comes up with some long shots: Fred the Mailman dances with the dogs on his route; Firefighter Fred jabs out a beat on his punching bag, and their teacher Mrs. Hoggenmuller leads a mean "Locomotion" line. But what will it take to out-dance the Prancer Dancers?

Olivia learns from Grandma that her performers do better when they dance for the joy of it.

"DON'T FORGET TO HAVE FUN!" SHE SAYS.

And the happy dancers steal the show with their joyful finale, In her new paperback edition of OLIVIA Dances for Joy (Olivia TV Tie-in) (Simon Spotlight, 2016), Natalie Shaw's funny story and illustrator Patrick Spaziante's portrayal of Olivia and her gang come to dance their hearts out in their cheery red costumes, and even little brother Ian joins the paparazzi in snapping photos of the happy winners.