Little Goddess Girls – Athena & the Mermaid’s Pearl

Joan Holub and Suzanne Williams's Athena & the Mermaid's Pearl is a Little Goddess Girls adventure for 7 year olds about a jewel hunt, a very grumpy fork and a contest to name a city.

What happens

Athena is eight and in a bad mood. She came second at the school invention fair and she's NOT happy about it.

Then the mermaid statue in the shopping centre starts talking. Her name is Amphitrite and she's brought a message from Zeus. Four jewels have been pinched from the top of his tower by the Four Winds, and Sparkle City has gone grey and foggy without them.

So Athena clicks the heels of her winged magic sandals and she's off to Mount Olympus. It isn't her first visit. Her friends Artemis, Aphrodite and Persephone are there to meet her, along with Oliver, her little white dog.

The girls split up to find a jewel each. Athena heads north (well, Oliver runs north after a butterfly and she follows). She ends up at No-Name City, where everyone is a walking, talking bit of kitchen equipment.

This is where it gets gloriously silly. Poseidon is a large grumpy fork who insists he's a trident. A pepper shaker king sprinkles pepper on Athena and makes her sneeze. She only gets through the gate by pretending to be a jug, one arm bent into a handle and her fingers pointed like a spout!

The city decides to hold a contest to find itself a better name. Athena's second-place invention from home suddenly matters a lot. If your reader knows a little Greek myth, they might guess where it's going. There's a note at the back that tells the real story, plus a word list and some questions to chat about together.

There's a sweet message about losing, too. Athena knows exactly how it feels to come second, and that turns out to matter. Who hasn't had to smile through somebody else's win?

It's one short quest, and there are still three jewels to find at the end. So your reader might well want to know how the other girls got on.

What to read next

Want to go back to where Athena's magic first found her? Athena & the Magic Land is the very first Little Goddess Girls book, where a sparkly storm whisks her off to Mount Olympus.