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Sweet Valley Twins #110
Pumpkin Fever
Could Elizabeth be cooler than Jessica?
Elizabeth loves Halloween, and this year she designs some cool jack-o'-lantern earrings just for fun. Her twin sister, Jessica, tells her the earrings are dorky. But at school, the earrings turn out to be a hit—even among Jessica's friends in the exclusive Unicorn Club!
Jessica can't let her friends forget that she is the twin with fashion sense. She tells everyone the pumpkin design is hers. And when she starts selling her spooky earrings to her friends and classmates, everyone is so impressed, Jessica's certain she'll be elected Sweet Valley Middle School Queen of Halloween. But Elizabeth knows Jessica's pumpkin popularity is built on a lie. How will she prove she's the real designer ... and that Jessica's a cheap imitation?
Elizabeth loves Halloween, and this year she designs some cool jack-o'-lantern earrings just for fun. Her twin sister, Jessica, tells her the earrings are dorky. But at school, the earrings turn out to be a hit—even among Jessica's friends in the exclusive Unicorn Club!
Jessica can't let her friends forget that she is the twin with fashion sense. She tells everyone the pumpkin design is hers. And when she starts selling her spooky earrings to her friends and classmates, everyone is so impressed, Jessica's certain she'll be elected Sweet Valley Middle School Queen of Halloween. But Elizabeth knows Jessica's pumpkin popularity is built on a lie. How will she prove she's the real designer ... and that Jessica's a cheap imitation?
137 pages, Paperback
First published September 8, 1997
About the author
Francine Pascal
1,098 books1,784 followersFrancine 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.
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Displaying 1 - 8 of 8 reviews
October 15, 2023
Almost every later SVT's book I've read has been real bad, and this is a stinker.
There's some "pumpkin pride" contest between the schools and Sweet Valley Middle School decides to go overboard af: throwing a festival, electing a pumpkin queen and king, and kids have to cast their vote by paying money to have a pumpkin carved.
Hundreds of these pumpkins are carved in the span of a few weeks. Somehow the boys are all in charge of doing the carving, which feels a little (lot) sexist.
Jessica is mad because no one is voting for her, so she steals Elizabeth's idea for some janky acorn earrings painted to look like jack-o-lanterns and become the hit of the school. These cheap little nut earrings become such a sensation, that a local fancy boutique requests an order? Ridiculous.
I just really didn't like this book at all.
There's some "pumpkin pride" contest between the schools and Sweet Valley Middle School decides to go overboard af: throwing a festival, electing a pumpkin queen and king, and kids have to cast their vote by paying money to have a pumpkin carved.
Hundreds of these pumpkins are carved in the span of a few weeks. Somehow the boys are all in charge of doing the carving, which feels a little (lot) sexist.
Jessica is mad because no one is voting for her, so she steals Elizabeth's idea for some janky acorn earrings painted to look like jack-o-lanterns and become the hit of the school. These cheap little nut earrings become such a sensation, that a local fancy boutique requests an order? Ridiculous.
I just really didn't like this book at all.
Read
November 4, 2021DNF
October 7, 2016
Synopsis: First, let's get to everyone's costumes!!
Janet: Angel
Lila: Hula Girl, Belly Dancer, and some kind of royal (she switched costumes each week to show how rich she was, I guess)
Jessica: Black Cat
Elizabeth: Devil
Anna Reynolds: Milkmaid
Amy: Pirate
Maria: Flamingo
Ellen: Peter Pan
Belinda: Lifeguard
The costumes were great this time around! Above are the ones I remember being mentioned, but I'm sure there were more.
Okay, so we open with the principal making an announcement about the Pumpkin Growers Association and Pumpkin Fever. Apparently PGA doesn't just relate to golf. Who knew? Basically, Sweet Valley Middle School needs to raise money for their school trip, because they don't want to be stuck going somewhere boring, you know, like LA or Las Vegas. Of course the Unicorns want to go to Hawaii (have they forgotten they already went? Maybe, this is like their 30th Halloween as 11-year-olds). So basically the school in Sweet Valley to display the most Pumpkin Fever will win the PGA prize. Now the school has to come up with an appropriate fund-raising idea. Jessica suggests a carnival and everyone shoots her down because they just had one (that's a first). They tell her it's not original enough to win the prize money. Winston talks about carving pumpkins, which leads Elizabeth to her brilliant (and kinda weird) idea. She suggests that the students commission pumpkins for one another, which the soccer team agrees to carve, in order to decorate the front steps of SVMS with pumpkins. This will help them raise the money for their school trip while also displaying Pumpkin Fever. I don't know why I just capitalized that, but they made it seem so important!
Oh, and one more thing. Whoever has the most pumpkins commissioned of them (male and female) will win King and Queen of Halloween. I don't have to tell you that the Unicorns offer to provide the winner with robes. Purple ones. From Lila's money. Did you expect anything less?
This is just the kind of competition that gets the Unicorn juices flowing. Janet, Lila, and Jessica are all absolutely determined to win Queen of Halloween. There is no way in hell Jessica would let those two win over her, so the ending to this book is very predictable. There is not a contest in any Sweet Valley book I've seen that Jessica doesn't win through sociopathic deeds.
And speaking of that, Jessica is a bit behind in the running at first. Aaron tells her later that he told the soccer team not to vote for her because she was bragging so much. I LOVE IT! In the beginning Jessica only gets two pumpkins, both from Liz. Meanwhile, everyone is commissioning pumpkins left and right for Liz and her brilliant idea for pumpkin fever. This makes Jessica see orange. She is depressed and mopey for a few days. The cover comes into play when Jessica has to do an art project that she, being Jessica, has not yet finished. She gets out her art supplies but can't figure out what to do. While she's up getting a snack, Liz sits down and hastily puts together some pumpkin earrings from acorns and orange paint. Yes, really. Jess comes back and tells her it would be a fashion disaster, so Liz leaves the earrings on the table. When Jess still can't figure out what to do, she takes Liz's earrings, signs "JW" on the back, and decides to turn them in as her own, reasoning that Liz was going to throw them away anyway. Jessica's logic just never fails to impress me.
From the moment she turns them in, Liz's earrings (notice I'm giving proper credit here) are a sensation. All the Unicorns want a pair, and they ask Jessica to make them some more. She looks at the original design and decides it's easy to replicate (duh). The Unicorns decide to make enough for their families and other friends, too, reasoning that they can sell them to increase funds for the school trip and display pumpkin fever. Jessica is tasked with picking up acorns for the earrings. Liz just happens to be wandering around outside, trying to think up a topic for a human interest piece, when she spots Jess under the tree. Obviously Jessica can't tell her why she's really there, so she makes up another lie about feeding a baby squirrel whose mother was hit by a car. Liz walks away smiling, because she actually thinks Jessica caring for a squirrel is a "human interest piece."
However, the next day Liz notices everyone wearing earrings very similar to her throw-away art project with Jessica's supplies. When Lila tells Liz that Jessica created the earrings, Liz is furious. Well, as furious as Liz can be considering she'll still feel the need to defend her low-life sister. She realizes that the squirrel story was probably a lie and feels humiliated about her "human interest" piece. It's too late for her to take back the story, though, as it's already been printed and distributed.
Soon enough the Jessica pumpkin collection doubles and triples. Everyone is so jazzed about the earrings and touched by the squirrel story that she quickly surpasses any other girl in the running for Queen of Halloween. Meanwhile, she gets a call from a local boutique to sell her earrings. By this point, however, she's above picking up acorns from underneath a tree, so she makes the other Unicorns do it. I should mention that the local news (why?) is there every week to record SVMS's pumpkin fever progress. On those days the kids are allowed to wear their costumes to school. This sounds like a recipe for a school shooting, but I'm sure that kind of thing never happens in Sweet Valley.
Liz has been sitting and stewing on Jessica's nonsense until she finally spills to Maria and Amy what's up. Amy is stunned that she ever felt sympathy for Jess. They find some old water balloons and are about to douse the girls pictured on the cover (Jess, Anna, and Janet), when Liz decides that "the pen is mightier than the sword." Oh, please. She instead writes a story that is the exact rip-off of "The Tell-Tale Heart" (hers is even called "The Tell-Tale Pumpkin"). How she knows Jess will read anything in the Sixers is beyond me, but she does read it during a boring class. Basically it's about a good and evil twin (sadly not THE evil twin). The evil twin buries the pumpkin designed by the good twin because everyone liked it better, but then the evil twin is haunted by digging sounds and glowing pumpkins wherever she goes. Liz clues in half the school to her prank, and they proceed to make Jessica go out of her gourd (see what I did there?).
Maria, Liz, and Amy play recorded digging sounds around Jess whenever they can. They make sure whoever else is around at the time denies hearing anything. Then one day while over at Lila's house, they raise glowing pumpkins up to her window where only Jess can see. Steven says Jessica must be going crazy, and for once she actually agrees with him.
Oh, and before all this Liz tries to expose Jess to the media, saying they should ask to see her furry squirrel pal. Instead Jessica bursts into tears and says that he died and she couldn't save him. What a world-class sociopath she is.
Even throughout hearing noises, Jessica is consumed with winning. She doesn't really learn her lesson, it seems, until the day of. She decides to come clean about the earrings and the pumpkin story in front of the whole school. She is crowned Queen with Denny Jacobson winning King (who?). She confesses, but nobody seems surprised. As soon as Jessica realizes the lack of shock on everyone's faces, she is hit with pumpkin goo from the side. An all out pumpkin goo war begins, with the press capturing it all. Naturally, Sweet Valley wins the PGA contest for Pumpkin Fever, and they raise enough money for a decent school trip (please! Send them to the moon!).
Alternate Title: "Seeing Orange"
Tagline: "Jessica's Halloween lie..."
On a Scale of 1-10, How Annoying is Elizabeth?: 3. Her idea of revenge is pretty good in this one.
On a Scale of 1-10, How Sociopathic is Jessica?: 10, of course.
The Big Deal: King & Queen of Halloween
Cover: Good or Bad?: Good! This (mostly) happens. Elizabeth is about to throw the water balloon but decides to get revenge a different way. And usually the new artist who drew the twins does a poor job, but this one turned out pretty well.
Lingering Questions: Why can't the boutiques that ordered Liz's earrings make their own pumpkin earrings? It didn't sound that hard.
Quotes from the Book: "She could already imagine dozens of Jessica Wakefield jack-o-lanterns decorating the school."
(I bet she could.)
"Wasn't she still one of the prettiest girls in school? Didn't she have the kind of personality that made everyone want to be her friend?"
(Sociopaths across America, unite).
"So what if she hadn't actually put the earrings together herself? They had been made with her art supplies, hadn't they? That made her the cocreator, at least."
(Sounds legit.)
"Rooting around on the ground for acorns didn't give her nearly the same kind of thrill as listening to people talk about how great she was."
(Naturally).
"It made her sound totally humble while at the same time making it perfectly clear that she deserved the crown more than anyone else possibly could."
"Maybe she hadn't exactly done either of those things, but everybody thought she had. And that was almost the same thing, wasn't it?"
(More sound logic from Jessica Wakefield).
Moral of the Story: If you paint an acorn orange, Gucci will call and want the secret to your awesome fashion sense.
Final Rating: Three stars. I loved everyone's costumes in this book.
Janet: Angel
Lila: Hula Girl, Belly Dancer, and some kind of royal (she switched costumes each week to show how rich she was, I guess)
Jessica: Black Cat
Elizabeth: Devil
Anna Reynolds: Milkmaid
Amy: Pirate
Maria: Flamingo
Ellen: Peter Pan
Belinda: Lifeguard
The costumes were great this time around! Above are the ones I remember being mentioned, but I'm sure there were more.
Okay, so we open with the principal making an announcement about the Pumpkin Growers Association and Pumpkin Fever. Apparently PGA doesn't just relate to golf. Who knew? Basically, Sweet Valley Middle School needs to raise money for their school trip, because they don't want to be stuck going somewhere boring, you know, like LA or Las Vegas. Of course the Unicorns want to go to Hawaii (have they forgotten they already went? Maybe, this is like their 30th Halloween as 11-year-olds). So basically the school in Sweet Valley to display the most Pumpkin Fever will win the PGA prize. Now the school has to come up with an appropriate fund-raising idea. Jessica suggests a carnival and everyone shoots her down because they just had one (that's a first). They tell her it's not original enough to win the prize money. Winston talks about carving pumpkins, which leads Elizabeth to her brilliant (and kinda weird) idea. She suggests that the students commission pumpkins for one another, which the soccer team agrees to carve, in order to decorate the front steps of SVMS with pumpkins. This will help them raise the money for their school trip while also displaying Pumpkin Fever. I don't know why I just capitalized that, but they made it seem so important!
Oh, and one more thing. Whoever has the most pumpkins commissioned of them (male and female) will win King and Queen of Halloween. I don't have to tell you that the Unicorns offer to provide the winner with robes. Purple ones. From Lila's money. Did you expect anything less?
This is just the kind of competition that gets the Unicorn juices flowing. Janet, Lila, and Jessica are all absolutely determined to win Queen of Halloween. There is no way in hell Jessica would let those two win over her, so the ending to this book is very predictable. There is not a contest in any Sweet Valley book I've seen that Jessica doesn't win through sociopathic deeds.
And speaking of that, Jessica is a bit behind in the running at first. Aaron tells her later that he told the soccer team not to vote for her because she was bragging so much. I LOVE IT! In the beginning Jessica only gets two pumpkins, both from Liz. Meanwhile, everyone is commissioning pumpkins left and right for Liz and her brilliant idea for pumpkin fever. This makes Jessica see orange. She is depressed and mopey for a few days. The cover comes into play when Jessica has to do an art project that she, being Jessica, has not yet finished. She gets out her art supplies but can't figure out what to do. While she's up getting a snack, Liz sits down and hastily puts together some pumpkin earrings from acorns and orange paint. Yes, really. Jess comes back and tells her it would be a fashion disaster, so Liz leaves the earrings on the table. When Jess still can't figure out what to do, she takes Liz's earrings, signs "JW" on the back, and decides to turn them in as her own, reasoning that Liz was going to throw them away anyway. Jessica's logic just never fails to impress me.
From the moment she turns them in, Liz's earrings (notice I'm giving proper credit here) are a sensation. All the Unicorns want a pair, and they ask Jessica to make them some more. She looks at the original design and decides it's easy to replicate (duh). The Unicorns decide to make enough for their families and other friends, too, reasoning that they can sell them to increase funds for the school trip and display pumpkin fever. Jessica is tasked with picking up acorns for the earrings. Liz just happens to be wandering around outside, trying to think up a topic for a human interest piece, when she spots Jess under the tree. Obviously Jessica can't tell her why she's really there, so she makes up another lie about feeding a baby squirrel whose mother was hit by a car. Liz walks away smiling, because she actually thinks Jessica caring for a squirrel is a "human interest piece."
However, the next day Liz notices everyone wearing earrings very similar to her throw-away art project with Jessica's supplies. When Lila tells Liz that Jessica created the earrings, Liz is furious. Well, as furious as Liz can be considering she'll still feel the need to defend her low-life sister. She realizes that the squirrel story was probably a lie and feels humiliated about her "human interest" piece. It's too late for her to take back the story, though, as it's already been printed and distributed.
Soon enough the Jessica pumpkin collection doubles and triples. Everyone is so jazzed about the earrings and touched by the squirrel story that she quickly surpasses any other girl in the running for Queen of Halloween. Meanwhile, she gets a call from a local boutique to sell her earrings. By this point, however, she's above picking up acorns from underneath a tree, so she makes the other Unicorns do it. I should mention that the local news (why?) is there every week to record SVMS's pumpkin fever progress. On those days the kids are allowed to wear their costumes to school. This sounds like a recipe for a school shooting, but I'm sure that kind of thing never happens in Sweet Valley.
Liz has been sitting and stewing on Jessica's nonsense until she finally spills to Maria and Amy what's up. Amy is stunned that she ever felt sympathy for Jess. They find some old water balloons and are about to douse the girls pictured on the cover (Jess, Anna, and Janet), when Liz decides that "the pen is mightier than the sword." Oh, please. She instead writes a story that is the exact rip-off of "The Tell-Tale Heart" (hers is even called "The Tell-Tale Pumpkin"). How she knows Jess will read anything in the Sixers is beyond me, but she does read it during a boring class. Basically it's about a good and evil twin (sadly not THE evil twin). The evil twin buries the pumpkin designed by the good twin because everyone liked it better, but then the evil twin is haunted by digging sounds and glowing pumpkins wherever she goes. Liz clues in half the school to her prank, and they proceed to make Jessica go out of her gourd (see what I did there?).
Maria, Liz, and Amy play recorded digging sounds around Jess whenever they can. They make sure whoever else is around at the time denies hearing anything. Then one day while over at Lila's house, they raise glowing pumpkins up to her window where only Jess can see. Steven says Jessica must be going crazy, and for once she actually agrees with him.
Oh, and before all this Liz tries to expose Jess to the media, saying they should ask to see her furry squirrel pal. Instead Jessica bursts into tears and says that he died and she couldn't save him. What a world-class sociopath she is.
Even throughout hearing noises, Jessica is consumed with winning. She doesn't really learn her lesson, it seems, until the day of. She decides to come clean about the earrings and the pumpkin story in front of the whole school. She is crowned Queen with Denny Jacobson winning King (who?). She confesses, but nobody seems surprised. As soon as Jessica realizes the lack of shock on everyone's faces, she is hit with pumpkin goo from the side. An all out pumpkin goo war begins, with the press capturing it all. Naturally, Sweet Valley wins the PGA contest for Pumpkin Fever, and they raise enough money for a decent school trip (please! Send them to the moon!).
Alternate Title: "Seeing Orange"
Tagline: "Jessica's Halloween lie..."
On a Scale of 1-10, How Annoying is Elizabeth?: 3. Her idea of revenge is pretty good in this one.
On a Scale of 1-10, How Sociopathic is Jessica?: 10, of course.
The Big Deal: King & Queen of Halloween
Cover: Good or Bad?: Good! This (mostly) happens. Elizabeth is about to throw the water balloon but decides to get revenge a different way. And usually the new artist who drew the twins does a poor job, but this one turned out pretty well.
Lingering Questions: Why can't the boutiques that ordered Liz's earrings make their own pumpkin earrings? It didn't sound that hard.
Quotes from the Book: "She could already imagine dozens of Jessica Wakefield jack-o-lanterns decorating the school."
(I bet she could.)
"Wasn't she still one of the prettiest girls in school? Didn't she have the kind of personality that made everyone want to be her friend?"
(Sociopaths across America, unite).
"So what if she hadn't actually put the earrings together herself? They had been made with her art supplies, hadn't they? That made her the cocreator, at least."
(Sounds legit.)
"Rooting around on the ground for acorns didn't give her nearly the same kind of thrill as listening to people talk about how great she was."
(Naturally).
"It made her sound totally humble while at the same time making it perfectly clear that she deserved the crown more than anyone else possibly could."
"Maybe she hadn't exactly done either of those things, but everybody thought she had. And that was almost the same thing, wasn't it?"
(More sound logic from Jessica Wakefield).
Moral of the Story: If you paint an acorn orange, Gucci will call and want the secret to your awesome fashion sense.
Final Rating: Three stars. I loved everyone's costumes in this book.
September 22, 2023
A little ridiculous. Even for this series. C-
December 13, 2023
Wow, Jessica…
April 15, 2024
Jessica is the worst.
July 5, 2010
I read this around the time when the term "Google it!" doesn't exist yet, I was only 11. Most of the time in our class during breaks we pass around books of other friends who already finish reading it. This was one of them. Facebook wasn't there yet to take my time off during 'boredom', so I just read it anyway.
SweetValleyTwins series was like a must read for girls our age around that time. So it was like a very girly-girl series with pink wallpapers, but I have to admit that I actually love growing up reading them.
Pumpkin Fever was my favourite of all time. I gave up all my SweetValley Collection (even the first kiss series) except for this one. I can read it over and over again and laugh about how the girls kept bitchin' about their Halloween festival disaster. I still couldn't find that pumpkin earrings selling anywhere.
I can totally imagine passing down this book to my daughter while telling her about the facts of teenage girls..
SweetValleyTwins series was like a must read for girls our age around that time. So it was like a very girly-girl series with pink wallpapers, but I have to admit that I actually love growing up reading them.
Pumpkin Fever was my favourite of all time. I gave up all my SweetValley Collection (even the first kiss series) except for this one. I can read it over and over again and laugh about how the girls kept bitchin' about their Halloween festival disaster. I still couldn't find that pumpkin earrings selling anywhere.
I can totally imagine passing down this book to my daughter while telling her about the facts of teenage girls..
June 22, 2013
I remember the cover just not the story
Displaying 1 - 8 of 8 reviews