Pikachu in Love

Pikachu in Love by Tracey West is the first book in the Pokémon Reader series, which is designed for beginning readers. It was published by Scholastic in January 2003. It was later republished as a Level 2 reader in December 2016.
==Blurb==
<ab>Love Sick!
Uh-oh! Jessie and James drank juice. The juice makes Pokémon fall in love with them. Can Ash find a cure? Or will Pikachu love Team Rocket forever?''
</ab>
==Plot==
This book follows the plot of the Pokémon the Series episode A Better Pill to Swallow.
The book starts with and meeting a strange person. The strange person says he is Old Man Shuckle, and he makes special medicine for Pokémon. asks Old Man Shuckle how he does this, and Old Man Shuckle replies that it is a secret, and that he uses a Pokémon called . Brock begs that Old Man Shuckle tell him, and Old Man Shuckle explains each step. First, he put secret ingredients inside the Shuckle shell. Then he let the Shuckle loose in the wild. A year later, he found the Shuckle again, and took the juice out of the shell. Old Man Shuckle adds that there is even a special kind of juice that can make any Pokémon easy to catch and train. He says that to make it, one must use a rare blue Shuckle. Brock exclaims that if he had that juice, he could become the world's best Pokémon Trainer. Old Man Shuckle replies that he can give Brock some of the juice, but he and his friends must help him. Old Man Shuckle calls out his . Old Man Shuckle explains that his Bellsprout's name is Spoopie, and that it can sniff out wild Shuckle. Old Man Shuckle states that he needs them to follow Spoopie and collect the blue Shuckle for him. Brock replies that he shall help, and Ash and agree, following Spoopie into the woods.
Spoopie sniffs the air and runs, and Misty notes that Spoopie is very speedy. Spoopie finds lots of Shuckle and throws them into the air for the others to catch. Then Spoopie runs off again, even with Brock calling out for it to slow down. Spoopie finds the rare blue Shuckle; however, suddenly drops down from the trees. cries that the blue Shuckle is theirs now, and sends out , commanding it to use . With smoke filling the air, Team Rocket escapes. Jessie exclaims that she is thirsty, and drinks the juice from the blue Shuckle, with James drinking some of the juice after her. 's eyes become hearts, and he subsequently gives James a big hug and a kiss. Nearby, the wild Shuckle begin to move. Ash asks where the Shuckle are going, and Old Man Shuckle explains that someone drank the blue Shuckle juice, and that one should never drink it right from the shell, as it makes Pokémon fall in love with the drinker. 
The Shuckle, all being in love with Jessie, attempt to lick her face. Screaming in disgust, Jessie runs away. Team Rocket runs into Ash and his friends, and Misty demands they give back the blue Shuckle immediately. Jessie says that she will fight them first, calling on and . Under the effects of the blue Shuckle juice, Wobbuffet and Arbok do not want to attack and instead wanted to hug Jessie. Ash commands to use , but Pikachu does not attack, as he is in love with Jessie. Old Man Shuckle, yelling that it has gone too far, runs up and sprinkles a powder on all of the Pokémon. Old Man Shuckle explains that the powder has cured all the Pokémon, and thus the Pokémon were not in love with Jessie and James anymore.
Spoopie uses to take the blue Shuckle from Jessie's arms. Jessie brags that they still have Pikachu, but Pikachu is not in love with Jessie anymore and shocks Team Rocket, causing them to blast off. Old Man Shuckle thanks Brock for finding the blue Shuckle and presents the special juice he promised, explaining that he can use it to catch and train any Pokémon. Brock politely declines, explaining that he wants his Pokémon to love him for what he is, not because of any juice. Ash states that he thinks they already do, and Pikachu agrees.
==Major events==
===Debuts===
* Old Man Shuckle
====Pokémon debuts====
* 
==Characters==
===Humans===
*
*
*
*Jessie
*James
*Old Man Shuckle
===Pokémon===
* ()
* ()
* ()
* ()
* (Spoopie, Old Man Shuckle's)
* 
==Trivia==
===Errors===
* In the book, Spoopy is misspelled as Spoopie.
* (as it should have been spelled at the time) is spelled with spacing as 'Smoke Screen'.
* In the episode the book was based on, the special was referred to as the purple Shuckle. In the book, it is referred to as the blue Shuckle.
* In the 2016 reprint, many images have been replaced by ones from the actual episode; however, these are low-quality and appear to be cropped to 16:9. The same issue applies to various other Johto-era episodes in other Scholastic licensed books.
==Related articles==
Category:Readers
it:Pikachu in Love