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Pickle the armadillo lived in a cozy burrow at the edge of Prairie Junction, where the sidewalk ends and the tall grass begins.
Pickle had stripes on his shell, ears like two question marks, and the finest pair of rain boots in the whole county.
They were red. They were shiny.
They were also… a little bit too big.
On Saturday, a poster went up on the library door:
Pickle read it twice. He read it three times.
His friend Mabel — a field mouse — read it too, from under his shoulder.
“A dance,” he whispered, “where the whole point… is STOMPING?”
His boots went thump-thump all by themselves.
Pickle practiced in the backyard.
Step. Step. STOMP—
FLOP.
The boots kept going. Pickle did not.
He rolled twice, bumped the rain barrel, and landed upside down like a striped bowling ball with ears.
“Up again!” said Pickle. “Dust off! Try again!”
He tried slow. Flop. He tried fast. Thump-flop. He tried with a running start, and rolled clean through Grandma’s laundry line.
By supper, Pickle had flopped eleven times.
“Maybe,” he said to his boots, “you are just TOO big.”
That night, Pickle lined his boots up by the door.
He looked at them a long time.
“Real dancers don’t fall down eleven times,” he said.
His boots said nothing. Boots are good at that.
But his ears drooped… and so, somehow, did the boots.
Grandma set down two cups of cocoa.
“Your grandpa wore boots like those,” she said. “Fell in the creek his first dance. Came up smiling, full of minnows.”
Pickle giggled in spite of himself.
“Falling isn’t the end of the dance, Pickle. It’s just the part before—”
She waited.
“…before you get up?” said Pickle.
“Before you get up.”
So Pickle practiced differently.
Not the whole dance. Just one step.
Step. …Stayed up!
Step, step. …Stayed up!
Step, step, STOMP—
Flop.
“Up again!” laughed Pickle. “Dust off! Try again!”
By Tuesday, Pickle could do six steps and a stomp. By Thursday — six steps, a stomp, AND a turn. The turn was mostly falling. But it was falling ON PURPOSE.
Across the prairie, everyone could hear him practicing: Step-step-stomp, step-step-stomp—
“He’s still at it,” said the neighbors.
He was still at it.
Fair day dawned bright and golden.
And then — because Kansas — it rained.
It rained on the Ferris wheel. It rained on the watermelon stand. It rained, most of all, on the beautiful wooden dance stage…
…until the stage wasn’t wood-colored anymore.
It was MUD-colored.
The fiddlers tuned up. The crowd leaned in.
The first dancer slipped.
The second dancer slid.
The third dancer did a very impressive spin that she did not mean to do at all.
Then the fiddler called out: “Last dancer! Pickle the armadillo!”
Every eye turned to the little armadillo in the enormous red boots.
Pickle stepped onto the stage.
Step. (The mud went squelch — but the boot stayed PUT.) Step. (Deeper. Solid.) STOMP!
And something wonderful happened: where Pickle’s big boots landed, the mud packed DOWN. Firm. Flat. DANCEABLE.
“Up again!” shouted Pickle — though he’d never gone down. “Dust off! Try again!”
He stomped the whole stage into a dance floor, one red boot at a time, and then — right in the middle of it, with the fiddles flying —
Pickle danced his dance.
Six steps. A stomp. And a turn.
Pickle did not win the trophy for fanciest dancer.
He won something better: the last dance, leading the whole fair — every animal in Prairie Junction stomping behind him in a line, mud and all.
That night, Pickle polished his boots and lined them up by the door.
“Not too big,” he said.
And he danced one more step before bed — step, step, stomp — just to be sure.
(He stayed up.)
The very same little red boot is hiding in every picture in this book. Can you find all twelve?
Pickle’s story is about perseverance — getting up one more time than you fall down.