Little Mermaid: The Haunted Palace

In this book, the sisters and Triton are visiting Duchess Dagmer of the Arctic Ocean to celebrate her 100th birthday. Dagmer lives in an ancient, giant ice castle which is supposed to be haunted.

Shortly after their arrival, the girls are escorted to their quarters by the duchess's great-grandsons, who they met once before and babysat for when the boys visited Triton's palace with their parents.

Some of the girls, like Alana, are afraid of the ghost of Morven, but others, like Attina and Andrina, are not afraid at all. Of course, the boys have conveniently put the girls in the wing that includes the room where Morven died. And it's Ariel who has to occupy that room.

Naturally, ghostly hijinks begin and the perpetrators are obvious from the start. It's the boys, getting revenge for an old prank the girls played on them when they were babysitting. The boys make use of the castle's secret passages to orchestrating their "haunting."

After one sighting, Ariel finds the entrance to the secret passage connected to her room, and she and Andrina lead the others down it. They find the boys and learn that they're behind all this. Then the girls concoct their own plot and get every single person in the castle in on it. At the duchess's big birthday party, Andrina will fake sick, dress up as Morven and come scare the boys, while everyone else pretends not to see him. This all goes swimmingly...or so everyone thinks. Shortly after Morven chases the boys out of the room and wishes the duchess a happy birthday, Andrina comes rushing in, saying she had been trapped in her room the entire time. Looks like the real Morven loves a good joke, too!

No sister facts from this one, unless you count Alana being a bit of a scaredy-cat, though she really hasn't been before.

Little Mermaid: King Triton, Beware!

Another simple, but a bit crazy, plot. The circus is in town and Ariel leads her sisters over to check it out while they're setting up. The meet the merseer, or actually her replacement, who predicts a couple minor things, then says the crown of King Triton will be toppled.

Naturally, there's a debate among the sisters over whether to believe in the merseer or not, but on the way home, both of her minor predictions come true.

So just to be safe, all the mermaids keep an eye on the circus and what better way to do so than to join it? They start training to take part in the act as a surprise for Triton.

Chaos ensues during the show and the king's crown is indeed toppled...as in bumped off his head briefly.

My favorite part is seeing intelligent, well-read Attina be skeptical. After her not so bright showing in Ariel the Spy, she needed to look smarter.

Also, the roles each mermaid plays in the circus are fun. Ariel is a daredevil who gets shot out of a whale's blowhole. Arista works with sea horses, Alana with dogfish, and Aquata with sharks. Athletic Andrina goes with the acrobats. Attina becomes the magician's assistant and poor Adella is a clown, which she hates.