Little Mermaid: Ariel the Spy

And we're back to Ariel being the main character again, but this time she's doing something stupid, so it's not as bad as the earlier books, where she always had to be the one to solve the problem or save the day.

Ariel's reading a book on Mata Herring for school and she gets carried away with the theme. When a substitute teacher turns up instead of her favorite, she concocts this ludicrous plot that this sub has kidnapped her favorite, because they're both in the running for Teacher of the Year. She drags her friend Coral into it, as well as Adella and Attina. Of course she turns out to be very wrong and has to apologize to everyone in front of her father.

No new sister facts in this one. The high point of the book is meeting Coral, who's Ariel's first friend that isn't a fish or a bird. Not that she gets a ton of characterization, but at least she exists. The low point for me was that the author didn't seem to grasp either Adella or Attina. Attina's the bookworm, but she never read the Mata Herring book herself and she seems like one of the smarter characters, so I can't see her really being this silly. And Adella is tasked with talking to the substitute, because she thinks he's handsome, and she bombs it completely and looks like a total airhead. Definitely the worst of the first six books.