Sweet Valley Kids Super Special #2 - The Easter Bunny Battle
As if the awesome flowered dresses the twins are wearing on the cover aren’t enough, the Easter eggs outlining the cover are TEXTURED. Sweet Valley wins again.
The first two sentences of the book set the stage perfectly: My name is Jessica. Jessica Wakefield.
After Jess’s introduction to herself, she reviews for the reader’s benefit how similar she and Liz are. I love books from Jessica’s perspective because she’s so self-centered and manipulative and has no qualms about admitting it. For example, she tries to claim that Liz’s stuffed bear is hers and Liz says no. Jess narrates thus: I knew she was right, but I was tired of hunting for my bear. Liz the Pushover then helps Jess look for her bear because she thinks it’ll be good practice for the Easter egg hunt at school.
Which brings us to the main event of the book. There’s an Easter Egg Hunt at school! The kid who finds the most eggs gets a rabbit as a prize. A REAL, LIVE RABBIT. Oh, the lucky parents. Really, does this sound like a good prize to give to 2nd graders?
Jessica hopes that her dad and Steve aren’t allergic to rabbits like they’re allergic to cats. But if they are, Jess says they should just get rid of Steven and not the rabbit. Sounds good to me. He doesn’t add much to the books anyway.
Jessica suggests that to win the hunt, she and Liz should team up and help each other look. She tells Liz it’s because she knows how much Liz wants the bunny when in reality, I could see my name written on the blackboard in big, double-thick letters - Jessica Wakefield, Winner! - Everyone would be jealous of me.
The next day at school, Lila leads the pledge of allegiance. This is notable because… well, it’s not. Moving on.
Mrs. Otis says that she’s going to have one of the students hide the Easter eggs. Caroline Pearce prove she’s a moron by asking if the student who hides the eggs also gets to hunt for them. Uh, no. Mrs. Otis says that whoever gets the highest grade on the next day’s social studies test will be the one to hide the eggs. The students all want to win the rabbit, so no one wants to do well on the test.
Could there be a worse way to encourage students to do well in school?
Jess is unhappy because if Liz gets the highest grade (and why wouldn’t she?), they can’t team up to find the eggs. She then makes the selfless decision to help Liz NOT do well on the test. This decision makes Jess feel better about herself. So, she spends the rest of the evening distracting Liz by asking her questions like, “What’s 4 + 6?”
I know you’re going to be shocked but…. Liz gets the highest grade on the test. Apparently, she’d read the whole chapter the week before. Jess is depressed about this. She’s even more upset after other students try to hit Liz up for hints about where she’s going to hide the eggs. Jess says that if anyone’s gong to be getting hints, it’ll be Liz’s twin sister. But Liz says no. Liz is always saying no!! (And Todd can back me up on that)
At dinner, Steven mentions how exciting it’d be to come up with impossible hiding places. Jessica thinks how badly she wants to throw her slice of pizza at him. She also asks Liz whose side she’s on. What side????
Jess-ism: When you have a sister who tries to be fair all the time, it can really make trouble… She didn’t even try to write bad answers. She could have been a little more considerate.
Ahhh, I love it.
When Jessica goes up to their room, Liz is writing in a notebook and won’t tell Jess what it is. She can’t cajole the info out of her and then figures out that Liz is writing down the list of hiding places. Jess then starts scheming how to get a peek at the list.
At gym class on Thursday, the class plays kickball. Usually, Lila, Ellen, and Jess try on purpose to not make good kicks so they don’t have to run around the bases. Liz is wandering around the playing field, making notes of where to hide eggs. Jess feels like she’d be giving away a secret if she told Lila and Ellen that Liz was making a list of hiding places (why? Knowing Liz has a list is different from seeing the list), so Jessica actually kicks the ball and runs to 1st base so she doesn’t have to answer questions from Lila and Ellen.
Jessica sees Liz staring longingly at the bunny and, to her credit, thinks that she wants to win the hunt for herself, but she wants Liz to get the bunny.
On the bus on the way home, Crystal Burton (?) brags that because 3rd graders are too old for egg hunts, they’re making chocolate bunnies in class. How does one make a chocolate bunny? This is clearly before the push for “healthy school lunches.” Then, Crystal plays a game of “ticktacktoe.” This is how it’s spelled in the book. I don’t know.
Jess tries to hit up Liz one more time for hints about the hiding places, complaining that Liz had previously agreed they should work together as a team. She makes Liz feel bad for saying that’d be cheating, even though, you know, it would be cheating. Jess complains that she’ll have to work twice as hard without Liz’s help - which, incidentally, is the same amount of work that everyone else in the class has to do anyway. So, really, she’s just on equal footing with everyone else. Clearly, this is unacceptable.
With Liz out of the room, Jess goes to place a stuffed animal on Liz’s bed and sees a notebook peeking out from under the pillows. She opens it. The first page has a list of homework assignments and then a list of Liz’s favorite wild animals. I make those lists all the time! On the next page, there’s a list of hiding places for the eggs!! Jess quickly copies it all down and replaces the notebook so Liz will never know.
Liz hides the eggs that night. Even though Sweet Valley is the land of perpetual warmth and sun, somehow no one thinks the eggs will go bad overnight. I can see the next (albeit unwritten) book in the series: Sweet Valley and the Case of the Raging Food Poisoning.
Jess does the “hardest studying she’s done all year” and memorizes the list of hiding places.
The hunt begins! Jess points students in the wrong directions and, when the kids are called in at the end of the hunt, Jessica has a whole basket full of eggs while others only have a few. She wins easily. Mrs. Otis announces it in a “funny voice” and everyone looks at Jess suspiciously, thinking she must have cheated. Well, she did, but no one knows that, they just suspect it.
Liz is confused because she thinks she had some hard hiding places. Jess explains her winning to others by saying, “You know how twins can tell things about each other.” Lila says, “Or tell things to each other.” Now everyone hates both Liz and Jess because of their supposed cheating.
Even Todd gets in on the action (wait, Todd getting action??). Check it out: ”I never thought you’d be a cheater, Liz,” Todd said. ROFLMAO!!!! He should memorize that sentence for use in most SVH books.
Liz is not excited about getting the bunny because everyone now hates her.
Names for the bunny that Jess comes up with: Peter Rabbit, Fluffy, Homer, and Grapes.
Liz mopes about people thinking she’s a cheater. Here’s what I don’t get: Classmates think of her as a cheater here, but in SVH no one thinks she’s a cheater. WTF, Sweet Valley??
They go to the park the next day. A group of their friends are playing kickball. When Liz asks if she can join, Todd suggests that she join his team because if she’s going to cheat, he wants it to be on his side. Liz cries. The twins leave.
Jess again selflessly thinks, I was tired of Elizabeth’s complaining. She didn’t enjoy having the bunny and she was making it hard for me to enjoy being the winner.
She tries to cheer Liz up by saying, “My friends have caught me lying or cheating a few times, but they’re still my friends. They don’t really mind, even if they say they do.”
Liz is not cheered.
Jessica accidentally outs her cheating ways to Liz by telling her that she had to climb all the way to the top of the slide, even though Liz didn’t put an egg up there. Liz wonders how Jess knows she’d thought about putting an egg there and figures it out. Liz asks why Jess didn’t tell the class that Liz didn’t cheat. Jess points out that she did but the class didn’t listen.
During their fight, the bunny escapes. Jess blames Liz for letting the bunny escape. Liz convinces Jess that she should tell Mrs. Otis that she cheated. Jess is worried that if she tells everyone, they won’t be mad at Liz anymore and instead be twice as mad at Jess. But she agrees to tell the teacher if they find the bunny. And they do find him, munching on parsley in the kitchen.
Liz tells Jess that she’s a good finder, and Jess brags that she could have won the hunt without cheating. Which begs the question, why didn’t she?
They tell Mrs. Otis and the class about how Jess cheated. Most of their friends look surprised. Jess thinks this is because they didn’t think she’d tell the truth about cheating. It’s sad that she doesn’t think they’re surprised that she cheated. They keep the rabbit as a class pet. Mrs. Otis says they’ll have another Easter egg hunt and finally realizes that maybe she should be the one hiding the eggs.
The end!