Kate Lipton's family has some strange ideas. Her Dad is convinced that their family should be running a farm... for lizards. Who doesn't love lizards? The whole family takes a trip to Australia to find the most exciting and rare species. They return home with a mysterious egg.
Kate can't wait for the egg to hatch. It feels like it's taking forever! But when it finally does, strange things start to happen. She can't help but notice certain... changes around her house. Will Kate and her family be able to survive this Lizard of Oz?
Plot
We open with Mr and Mrs Lipton telling their daughter and our protagonist, Kate, that their quitting their jobs. Maybe it's just me, but I've found that parents don't traditionally discuss their employment with their kids. The reason, you don't ask? They're going to breed miniature horses and sell them. This is in spite of the fact that the breeding of 12 horses will mean that there will be little to none genetic variation in future generations, and they will most likely have to quickly resort to inbreeding.
The miniature horse farm works about as well as booking PowerWolf as a support act for a classical orchestra, so the Liptons nip off to Australia for their new cunning plan. They're looking at various kinds of lizards, except Kate's brother, Freddy, who is making the sort of "that's you" jokes to Kate, not unlike my little sister. Yep, the Liptons are opening a lizard farm! The agricultural problems with this will be discussed later. (Fun fact, this review is half the school curriculum in some smaller working class primary schools)
Suddenly, a man in a white suit with a white mane of hair and white stubble (Tumblr load up their shotguns and buy some plane tickets to Australia) comes up to the Liptons, and offers them a special kind of lizard. The bleached mafia guy, Dr Clegg (you know what, Bleached Mafia Guy sounds funnier), takes them to a lab, where he shows them a pretty fascinating 50 pound lizard with many rows of sharp teeth. Bleached Mafia Guy isn't selling them the lizard, however - it's selling them an egg. Now that's a rip-off if I ever saw one. BMG's assistant, Miss Morris, warns Kate not to take the egg, but that adds absolutely nothing.
After about 4 chapters worth of pointless scenes, Kate's "friend," Adele, who is always trying to one-up her, pops round. And she breaks the lizard egg Bleached Mafia Guy sold them. Except it was Dad, playing a trick on them. He takes them to see the real lizard egg... and he drops it.
After a pointless chapter and Freddy deciding to call the lizard Tas (good God), Kate notices that her hands have gone all cracked. And welcome, lady's and gentlemen, to the main conflict of the book. It's a good thing we're already halfway through.
Kate goes to work at the school play, where they're painting the sets. Bear in mind that it's half seven, and all these people volunteered to come to school. After Adele refuses to comprehend the unfathomable idea that a lizard did in fact hatch out of the egg, and she just wasn't there when it emerged, Kate discovers that her forearms have gone all scaly too.
Later, a bunch of reporters show up to ask Dad about the lizard, because anything classes as news in America/First News. Going off to the side, Kate feels a complusion to eat some flies. People'll do anything to annoy Jamie Oliver these days. Freddy shows up and asks what the hell just happens, and Kate brushes it off as a prank. For once, subverting this played-out trope is not the least bit entertaining.
Soon after, Kate realises that the cracked skin is similar to that of a lizard's. Well done; it only took you half the book to figure that out! She rushes to tell Dad, but instead finds an enourmous six-foot lizard-person. Well I'll be - the conspiracy theorists were right! She runs to get the reporters, but they're met with a big green bin bag.
The next day in school, Adele proposes an idea to the teacher, Ms
During PE, Kate starts crawling around on the floor like a lizard. AND ADELE FILMS ALL THIS ON HER PHONE WITHOUT EVEN ASKING HER. You can't just do that, Adele! Adele jokingly says that she's going to put this on Youtube (wow, that sounds like the next big meme of the year), but she isn't really. Oh no, I think the book bit me, because I'm getting overwhelming urges too - overwhelming urges to rip out this scene and burn it!
Later, the babysitter is preparing some chicken, and nips out to do something boring. Kate eats one of the raw slabs of meat (is the twist that she dies of salmonella?), and runs outside. Where she sinks her teeth into Chris' neck. Was Tas (oh yeah, that's in this story) a vampire as well?
After Adele starts talking of blackmailing Kate into doing chores for her (oh, get ****ed), Kate picks up Tas and shouts at it. Then she drops it. Is everybody's hands covered in grease? Before she can grab it, Tas has melted into the shadows.
After a completely melodramtic scene in which Kate stops herself eating a dead mouse, she completely disintegrates the mood by remembering the whole "baby photos" thing. Don't worry, we all forgot it too (though I'm pretty sure that was by choice). So, in a fairly atmospheric scene, Kate discovers a pile of dusty albums, which show pictures of an egg. The egg is labelled "Kate." For whatever reason, there isn't any pictures of her as a baby. That's like if my baby photos were just pictures of my Mum's belly.
Kate and Freddy (who turned up to look at the album too) go to look for Dad, but are instead confronted with the giant lizard from earlier. Except this time, it's not a bin bag - it's Dad. no, he's not playing a prank - Dad is a shapeshifting-lizard person. So is Mum. Along with Kate and Freddy. However, their lizard identities only come out when they're 13, which is why Freddy isn't turning into a lizard. Dear lord. And yes, this makes Tas
Kate remembers the fact that Adele (oh yeah, she's in this story) still has the video of her acting like a lizard, so they invite her round for tea. Don't worry, they don't eat her. That would be murder, and of course, you know what we say around here about that sort of thing.
Extra Toppings
After they buy the egg, Kate has a dream where she's in a supermarket full of eggs. She waits for the eggs to hatch, but they don't. Even she's disappointed by this. I'm only adding this because I thought it was funny.
This is the book that actually convinced me to start the blog. So, if scholastic want to know why, tell them, "Lizard of Oz."
Any Questions?
Why would anyone want to fam lizards? I mean, with most animals, it's for stuff like meat or eggs, but I doubt there are people in America (stupid as they are)that eat lizards or their eggs!
Also, what exactly are the lizard people? Are they aliens? Are they like the Silurians? And why do they hatch from eggs if they're born as humans, who are mammals and therefore by definition don't hatch from eggs?
Conclusion
Dear God, this story is lame. The plot is stretched out, the entire first half is utterly pointless, and the characers are all boring. The ending somehow has very little scope, despite the fact that it should be something crazy that everyone should be sent reeling at. By no means the worst Most Wanted book, but certainly the dullest.
Next Time: More of the same, but with hair, and a hilariously stupid ending, instead of a stupidly stupid one.
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