Jessica's Mermaid

Sweet Valley Kids #49

by Francine Pascal

Jessica's claim to have seen a mermaid during a class trip to an ocean preserve may lure her to her social death with her disbelieving friends, and the osprey-eyed girl must find the mermaid in order to convince her friends of her tale. Original.

Genres: Childrens, Middle Grade

80 pages, Paperback

First published January 1, 1994

About the author

Francine Paula Pascal was an American author best known for her Sweet Valley series of young adult novels. Sweet Valley High, the backbone of the collection, was made into a television series, which led to several spin-offs, including The Unicorn Club and Sweet Valley University. Although most of these books were published in the 1980s and 1990s, they remained so popular that several titles were re-released decades later.

Reviews

[Tara Calaby]

This is basically a SVK retelling of The Boy Who Cried Wolf and, as such, is one of the less interesting books. It's also rather concerning, in that the kids are all allowed to cuddle and pat a wild baby sea lion, which is really not what you want to be teaching children to do.

[Ruvi Perera · Rating 4 out of 5]

Jessica makes a lot of jokes and when she's real for once nobody believes her! She claims to have seen a mermaid during one of their field visits but because of the jokes she kept making on the way to the destination, nobody believed her. But she convinces Elizabeth to believe her and check out the place where she saw the mermaid and th story ends with Jessica being a hero!

[Alex · Rating 3 out of 5]

This is the last SVK book my library has, and I’m actually a little sad about it. I still can’t believe I went through my entire Sweet Valley-obsessed life without ever reading any of the books in this series, and now that I know how cute they are I would really love to read more.

[Sally · Rating 3 out of 5]

Shelley and I were talking about Sweet Valley and BSC books the other week and she mentioned never being able to find this one growing up, so I went hunting and managed to find it to give to her as a daggy surprise :P and of course I had to read it too! Very cute story. Jessica's jealous that Lila is getting ALL the attention, because she has a new necklace that she's showing off, so she starts making stuff up to make everyone listen to her... and eventually everyone gets tired of her "haha, made you look"s and "fooled you!"s and Elizabeth lectures her about the boy who cried wolf :P Jess is also a bit grouchy because she wore her new shoes on their beach excursion and they're really not made for hiking around and her feet are hurting. So she's lagging behind... when she sees a mermaid in a rock pool! And of course no one will believe her. BUT THIS TIME IT'S TRUE OMG.

Eventually she manages to convince Liz that she's not lying, and since Liz believes her the teacher decides they should go back and look for the mermaid... and it turns out to be a baby seal, caught in some seaweed, which they then rescue and Jessica is the hero. Also Ellen finds ALL the shells that make up Lila's special necklace, which Lila told her were super rare and could not be found just ANYWHERE :P

[Kylie · Rating 3 out of 5]

This one was great! So the class is going on a field trip, and everyone is excited. Jess keeps psyching people out by ‘making them look’, (annoying everyone) and has dressed all fancy (refer to front cover) for a trip to a beach and Lila is showing off her she’ll necklace from Hawaii, which Ellen is determined to replicate. Jess has a miserable time in her fancy clothes, and everyone is annoyed at her. She’s hanging alone when she spots a mermaid in a tidal pool! She tells everyone and of course no one believes her. She sulks and finally Liz says she believes Jess saw something. So they convince Mrs Otis and their guide to go back, with the whole class teasing her. Then Ellen yells out ‘I found it!’ And Mrs Otis asks ‘the mermaid?’ In shock 😂 Of course Ellen meant the last shell she needed to make an identical necklace to Lila’s. Anyway finally they spot the Mermaid - it’s a baby orphan sea lion with seaweed for hair 😂 Everyone teases Jess until their guide tells them without Jessica the sea lion would have died. And she gets to name it - of course it’s ‘Mermaid’ 🥰 Oh and Caroline bought a spare pair of sneakers which Jess borrows 😂
My rating - 5/10 - This is as high as my SVK ratings get! I was actually baffled as to what Jess could have seen!

[Sheila Read · Rating 5 out of 5]

I remember the cover just not the story.

[Robyn · Rating 3 out of 5]

The last of the Sweet Valley Kids books that I read.