The Goosebumps Most Wanted book where a girl starts becoming a lizard.
Kate Lipton thinks she's the only normal one in her family. Her brother is a pain, dad likes to play pranks and her parents in general are always coming up with weird schemes that backfire. After quitting their job and trying to start a zoo of miniature horses, they are almost broke. To fix this, they want to start a lizard zoo and buy some lizards for it. While visiting Australia, they find an odd lizard egg owned by a guy named Dr. Clegg. While everything about this seems shady, they don't listen to Kate and get it annoying. Soon after they get home, it hatches and bites Kate. And now she's starting to undergo an...odd transformation.
This book provides examples of:
- Abusive Parents: Kate Lipton's dad likes to play cruel pranks on her sometimes, on top of blowing money on things like miniature horses. The twist that he and his family are half lizard people can only excuse so much.
- Alpha Bitch: Adele, who is always making fun of Kate and doesn't believe her about having a weird lizard.
- Asshole Victim: Adele almost becomes one in the end when the Lipton family plans to eat her, but she runs away before this can happen.
- Blackmail: Adele records a video of Kate acting like a lizard, and forces Kate to do her bidding or she'll post the video online.
- Covers Always Lie: The lizard is not a threat and doesn't end up looking like it does on the cover.
- Foolish Sibling, Responsible Sibling: Freddy is the foolish to Kate's responsible.
- Lizard Folk: Kate and her family turn out to be lizard people.
- Punny Title: The title is one on two levels. First, an obvious pun on The Wizard of Oz and also one on how Australia is sometimes called Oz.
- Red Herring: The lizard itself. It at first seems to be the reason Kate is changing but in reailty she was just a lizard person hitting puberty. Plus, the assistant of the man they get the lizard from warns Kate but since the lizard wasn't evil, this goes nowhere.
- Tomato in the Mirror: Kate and her family are shapeshifting lizards and her getting bitten by the lizard they bought from Australia did nothing to make her transform. She was turning already.
- Transformation Horror: A girl slowly transforms into a lizard, finding that her skin is becoming dry like a lizard.
- Wacky Parent, Serious Child: Mr. Lipton is always goofing off, which annoys the more serious Kate.
