Jessica's Big Mistake

Sweet Valley Kids #7

by Francine Pascal (Creator), Molly Mia Stewart, Ying-Hwa Hu (Illustrator)

When author Angela Daley comes to town, the Wakefield twins both enter a story contest to vie for the opportunity to help Angela autograph her books, but Jessica cheats and turns in a story that is not hers

Genres: Fiction, Childrens, Middle Grade

80 pages, Paperback

First published May 1, 1990

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

[Tiffany Spencer]

Jessica’s Big Mistake
The twins are in class. Liz is asked to sound out the word astronomer. Yet, she doesn’t know what the word means. She asks Jessica but as usual she’s not paying attention to the reading lesson. Charlie helps her out. An astronomer he says is someone who studies the star. They are reading a new story by Angela Dialy. The teacher announces she’ll be coming next week to talk to them in the morning. Amy asks if she can autograph her book “Hedgehog Holiday.” Liz has all her books and wonders if she’ll sign them all. The teacher says yes. She’ll sign autographs after she tells them what it’s like to be an author. Then she’ll pick someone to help her with the autographs. Caroline asks if she can be the helper. The teacher says that if they want to be considered they’ll have to do a special project (she doesn’t care what) that has to do with books. Liz thinks she’ll just be happy to meet her.

Alice takes Jessica to the park after school with Lila. They talk about what the author will be like. Jessica wonders if she’ll wear a lot of diamonds and bracelets. Lila tells yes. Celebrities always wear a lot of jewelry and she’ll be very glamorous and have a limousine. Caroline overhears and says she’s going to get her something very special. Lila says she’s she’s going to buy her the best gift. Caroline reminds her it can’t be something they buy. It has to be something they do, but Lila says she doesn’t care. It can be whatever she says it is. Jessica wonders what she can do to get chosen. Caroline says she’s going to get her a special pen to write with. Jessica says it won’t matter because she knows what to do to get chosen. (Even though she doesn’t have a clue it gets the other girls attention).

Lix and Amy talk about their favorite books from Angela. Liz says she wishes she coule ba an author one day. Amy says she should show Angela something she wrote. Liz is a little shy about showing her something she wrote. She’s just a second grader. Amy suggests she show it to the teacher first. Liz thinks this is a good idea and says she knows what she’ll show her, but she won’t tell Amy. Amy tells her if she doesn’t tell she’ll tell Todd she thinks he’s cute. Liz says ok. She’ll show it to her but only after she shows the teacher to see if it’s good enough to show Angela.

Jessica’s plan is to impress Mrs. Becker by being a good student. She offers to take attendance and then clap the erasers. Caroline not to be outdone offers to clean them after Mrs. Becker is done with them. Jessica also ioffers to read for the day. She does it so well that the teacher tells her good job, Jessica says she loves to read (which gets her a look from Liz). Mrs, Becker tells her maybe she’d like to lead the class discussion on Angela’s new book and Jessica hesitates. Now she’ll actually have to read the book and think up questions. Caroline says she’ll do it and then Jessica says she’ll do it (figuring she can get Liz to “help” her.)

Liz struggles with her story but then has three pages full. She wants to write a story like Angela about animals and their adventures. When Jessica comes to ask her if she wants to play she notices her writing and asks what she’s writing, but Liz says nothing. Later, Jessica is trying to do her math homework but it’s not coming out right. She bawls up the paper and throws it in the trash can. That’s when she notices the other papers, takes them out, and reads Liz story about twin otters. Jess likes the story and doesn’t understand why Liz threw it away. She decides to give it to Angela herself (even if it is cheating besides she and Liz are almost the same person so it’s just like she wrote it).

Winston has built Angela a book shelf (badly). Jessica give the teacher her story and tells her what it’s about. The teacher says she can’t wait to read it. Jessica tells her she likes to write. The teaher says if she keeps reading and writing so much and doing so well in class it’ll be hard to tell her and Liz apart. Jessica gets offended and thinks she’s just as smart as Liz. To prove this she checks out a bunch of books in the library. Lila says she doesn’t need to check out books because she’ll probably get to meet angela because of her father. Liz asks if Jessica really read all the books and offers to help her. She then feels guilty about turning in Liz’s story. (Jessicahas told Lila that she’s going to get the special honor because she’s read all Angela’s books.)

Liz confesses to Jessica that night she can’t sleep because she turned in a story to her teacher and shes nervous about it. Liz won’t tell her what it’s about tho, but she says she will after Angela reads it. She can tell Jessica is upset, but Jessica says she’s nervous about the Q and A discussion and Liz decides it’s that and offers again to help her. The next day Jessica tries to get her paper back but her teacher doesn’t take her eye off her and asks her if she needs something. The paper is at the top of the pile. She tries to tell her teacher she made a mistake on the story and wants to correct it but the teacher says she’s already read it and Liz’s and they were both good. She tells the teacher she doesn’t think hers should be counted and the teacher says she already knows what she did and makes her promise not to do that again. Jessica asks if she’ll tell Liz and she says no but she should. As she’s headed baack to the desk relived, she drops the paper, Liz goes to pick it up, and sees the title (The otter’s Daughters).

Liz is mad and hurt but then Angela comes. She answers some questions and then she says she has a special story to read before she reads from her new book. She reads Liz’s story. Liz story is about otter sisters who are best friends. Everyone is impressed. Jessica apologizes to Liz and says she only turned it in because she didn’t think Liz wanted it. She’ll never do it again. Jessica’s Q and A’s go well but she knows she screwed up and won’t be called to help with the autographs. All the kids agree that the special helper should be Elizabeth and that’s who Mrs. Daily chooses. Jessica is happy her sister is the star of the day. Liz’s job is to hand angela the books as the students come up. At the end of the day, they all get permission slips from Mrs. Becker to go to the zoo. They’ll be going next week.


My Thoughts
It was pretty cool they had Mrs. Dailey come out and talk to the class about being an author. I probably would have asked her how she went about getting her books published. Maybe not at this grade level but as an older student. Or I would have included it in the talk. As an unpublished person trying to work on a book, I think this would have been good information. Maybe to give Elizabeth or for Elizabeth to have asked. I think it’s important if you see someone who has a dream of doing something that you’ve already succeeded in to help the next person if you have the means too. So if I were mrs. Daily I would have given Liz my contact information and told her to keep in touch with me and call or write me if she had an questions down the line. But even tho the gifts were kind of age-appropriate I thought they were kinda interesting. Had I gone to a second-grade glass to talk about my book and gotten a glow-in-the-dark pen and a bookcase I probably would have been amused by flattered.

Rating: 5

[Pastel Paperback · Rating 2 out of 5]

Jessica steals Elizabeth's short story and gets caught. Nothing else notable.

[Kylie · Rating 3 out of 5]

Or in other words, the first time Jessica uses Liz as a doormat. A famous author is coming to class, and everyone wants to do something special to be chosen to help her autograph her new book. Jess just wants to be the centre of attention, and Liz just wants Mrs Daley to read some of her work. So she writes a story about Otter twins. Jess finds the draft in the bin, copies it and hands it in... by Jessica Wakefield. At least at the age of 7 she felt a bit bad about it. Then Liz hands her story in too, Jess gets caught and Liz forgives her straight away 🙄 My rating 2/10, this one was not super exciting... maybe because the theme is pretty much every SVH book 😂

[Don Heiman · Rating 3 out of 5]

The short story “Jessica’s Big Mistake” (Sweet Valley Twins, Number 7) was created by Francine Pascal and written by Molly Mia Stewart. The short story was published by Bantam Skylark Books in 1990. The story features two twin sisters who are second grade students at Sweet Valley Elementary school in a Southern California. The twins share the same classroom. At the beginning of the Spring semester, Mrs. Becker the twins’ teacher announced that Mrs. Angela Daley, who is a very popular writer of children books, will come to their classroom to autograph books and to make a presentation about “what it means to be a good writer.” Mrs. Becker also tells the class that one student will be selected to help Mrs Daley during her presentation and during her autograph session. Mrs. Becker told the students that anyone who wants to be selected should do something special to welcome Mrs. Daley. She suggested the students think about making a poster, or write a book report, or do something that is creative and welcoming. Elizabeth wants to be selected and she writes a short story about two sister otters that are tightly bonded. After drafting the otter story, she decides to improve her draft’s penmanship and she produces an easier to read handwritten text. She discards the first draft and submits the new handwritten text to Mrs. Becker. Jessica discovers the first draft in a trash basket and she recopies it in her own handwriting. She puts her name on the recopied text; and gives the short story to Mrs. Becket. Later Jessica learns about Elizabeth’s penmanship redraft. Jessica also learns from Elizabeth that Mrs Becker knows Jessica’s submission is a forgery. Elizabeth is selected to help Mrs. Daley, and the students learn about Jessica’s “Big Mistake.” After Jessica confesses her guilt, Elizabeth and her teacher accept Jessica’s apology, and Jessica is asked to conduct a “question and answer’ session between the students and Mrs Daley. The short story ends with Mrs. Daley reading Elizabeth’s “otter short story” to the classmates.(P)

[Ruvi Perera · Rating 4 out of 5]

Elizabeth's favorite author is visiting their school and one person gets the chance to help her with the autographing. To choose that person the teacher decides to have something like a contest. Everybody is doing different things but Elizabeth is deciding to show her one of the stories written by her. Jessica unknowingly that Elizabeth is going to show the same story, finds the story in the trash bin and decide to submit it as her own

[Samantha · Rating 5 out of 5]

I don't think I've ever read a book that covers plagiarism...definitely not a book aimed at 7+ year olds! But it's done wonderfully...I wish I had read it before copying Danielle M's homework in year 7 and landing myself a week of detention!

[Maryam · Rating 3 out of 5]

Rating these books on goodreads is such a wonderful stroll down memory lane! I remember reading these books as a kid, and the Wakefield twins were such an important part of my life, haha.

[Karol · Rating 5 out of 5]

It’s always exciting to have a special visitor in class. Jessica makes a poor choice in the effort that it will reward her. In the end she realizes her mistake and tries to fix it.

[Tara Calaby]

Mrs. Becker’s second grade class at Sweet Valley Elementary School is super excited, because a famous author is going to visit their class. Elizabeth is especially looking forward to it, because Angela Daley is her favourite author. Mrs. Becker tells the kids that one of them will be chosen for the special (i.e. dubious) honour of helping Daley sign books. The lucky winner will be the person who does the most special thing to welcome the author to their class.

The kids all want to be chosen, so they think of the best things to do to impress Mrs. Becker. Jessica and Caroline compete to be the most helpful student during class, and Lila boasts about her wealthy father’s connections to everyone famous in Hollywood. (Apparently all authors are extremely rich and famous and wear diamonds while riding around in limousines. This small-time author would beg to differ!)

Elizabeth decides that she wants to write a story for Angela Daley to read, and writes what she thinks is her best story ever: a tale called The Otter’s Daughters. She’s then silly enough to leave her draft in the twins’ shared bedroom bin, meaning that Jessica just happens to stumble upon it when putting something in the bin herself. Jessica realises that a story would be the perfect thing to hand in for the contest and justifies stealing Elizabeth’s because they’re twins and that means that they’re basically the same person.

Of course, in the end Jessica finds out that Elizabeth has submitted the same story to Mrs. Becker and she rushes to get her version back before anyone finds out. Mrs. Becker has already worked out what happened, however, and Liz discovers Jessica’s betrayal as well. It’s all okay, though, because Liz forgives Jess (as always) and Angela Daley loves Elizabeth’s story and reads it out to the class. As her reward, Liz gets to take books out of a bag and hand them over to be signed. Now that is a prize worth vying for.

I enjoyed Jessica’s mental gymnastics in this one. They made her seem more like the older Jess than she has up to now in Sweet Valley Kids. On the whole, the story struggles a little to keep up momentum, with the discussions between the kids about what they intend to do for Angela Daley feeling a bit like they were inserted to make up the standard 72 or 73 pages.

[Christy Roberts · Rating 4 out of 5]

This was yet another book about Jessica being bad. I'm wondering when she will act good and mean it. I wasn't shocked when she took Elizabeth's story and put her name on it. It seems that is what she does take what's not hers or do things she's not supposed to.

Their second grade class is getting visited by an author named Angela Daley. She's Elizabeth's favorite and she wants to do something special by giving her own story. She's not sure about it, but after working she comes up with one about Otters that are twins.

It is great except one thing Jessica took her first draft and turned it in to their teacher first. She didn't think Elizabeth wanted it since was in the trash. She should have asked instead of just taking it.

Jessica learns her mistake when Elizabeth tells her she turned in story too. Jessica goes and tries get back but their teacher catches her. She knew the truth by reading Elizabeth's story. Jessica doesn't want tell her twin, but on way to her seat paper falls. Elizabeth is hurt, but doesn't get much time to dwell on it then since Angela Daley is there now.

Elizabeth got picked to help with the book signing and the sisters made peace with each other. I gave it a four because the rest of the book was good. Jessica really needs to start acting better.

[Shannon · Rating 2 out of 5]

"Shannon 11-7-90"

[Sanchi · Rating 4 out of 5]

its so funny i read this book 23 years ago it was great

[Robyn · Rating 3 out of 5]

I liked it when they met their favorite author & wrote short stories. I felt more like I related to Elizabeth in this one.

[Sheila Read · Rating 5 out of 5]

I remember the cover just not the story.