This is the Goosebumps puberty entry. It’s a topic 10-year-olds don’t want to read about, but maybe puberty can be scary. I remember this book being one that I wasn’t really into as a kid. Hopefully it’s better in retrospect. In this extra awkward Goosebumps entry, we’ll find out if this adventure is merry hairy, or scary.

Synopsis:

Larry Boyd is always being chased by stray dogs. There are a ton of them in town, and they like to chase him in particular. Seems like Larry turned up on the dog hit squad’s list.

Larry says he likes dogs, but they don’t like him. Sounds like a toxic relationship

Due to the winter weather, Larry wipes out in the snow and the dogs close in. Luckily, Lily shows up and saves him. They then head to Lily’s house.

Larry is in a band with her, Jared, Kristina, and Manny. You may know Manny from the Diary of the Wimpy Kid books and has joined this band as a legacy act to Loded Diper.

Larry is always being made fun of by his friends for being hairy, since he has long hair. They like to call him hairy Larry.

Larry then takes the opportunity to point out Lily’s gold necklace. She wears this necklace with a gold pirate coin on it, which comes from her grandfather. So, her grandfather’s a pirate. Well, I guess he has some connections to Caribbean pirates, not to be confused with Pirates of the Caribbean.

They have stiff competition in an upcoming battle of the bands against Howie and Marissa. They call themselves Howie and the Screamers. Howie isn’t even the singer or leader of the band, instead it’s Marissa. However, Howie named it after himself because he’s a narcissist and says nothing rhymes with Marissa.

Wow, I can already tell this is probably not going to be a good Goosebumps entry. Clearly Howie hasn’t learned English or has ever read a dictionary.

Larry’s band consists of three guitarists, a singer, and a keyboardist. What is this, a bad Ska band? Anyways, this seems awful, and they should find a drummer. Also, having three guitar players is crazy, especially with none of them playing bass.

However, they’re saved when they discover the keyboard has a drum track, which doesn’t work. Great.

After a tragic band session, the group plays in the snow. However, Larry is part raccoon, so he plays in a dumpster instead. In which, he finds a bottle of Insta-Tan. Larry shows it to the others.

They all go to the bathroom to try it on. Wow, all of them can fit into a single bathroom, that’s a big bathroom. After everyone else puts on the spray tan, Larry takes the bottle and looks at it. The bottle expired in 1991! Which is three years ago when this book came out.

Larry doesn’t want to try it. Lucky for you Larry, it’s perfectly safe. The worst thing that can happen with expired tanning lotion is it won’t be smooth, won’t work, or will smell bad.

Through peer pressure Larry puts the lotion on à la Silence of the Lambs. Manny’s face falls off. Turns out the lotion is actually highly corrosive. Everyone freaks out, but it’s actually just tissue paper and Manny’s pranking everyone. This makes no sense, how do you not recognize tissue paper?

The Insta-Tan ends up not working, as to be expected.

As they go back to playing, Larry overheats. It’s caused by a sweat gland issue, so he’s unable to sweat and has to go see Dr. Murkin.

Larry gets a shot every two weeks from Dr. Murkin to help treat this issue. Except it’s a green shot straight from Re-Animator.

Larry becomes worried about the Insta-Tan and tells his mom about it. She says he should take a nap when they get home. Wow, parents are ignoring their children more and more in these books.

After getting home, Lily comes over. She says she saw Marissa and Howie walking by. Larry asks if they were massacred by Lily. Woah, I don’t think that’s legal for Lily to do.

That night Larry works on homework until 10 P.M. How much homework does this guy get?

Afterwards Larry goes to brush his teeth, however he now has hair growing on his right hand. Look Larry, having hair on your hands is normal.

Larry worries he will be bullied so he tries to find hair remover. When this fails, he shaves his hand. His parents ask him what he’s up to. He responds by saying combing his hair, which for some reason he does that every night.

Larry now believes the Insta-Tan caused his hair growth. Yeah, so tanning lotion doesn’t do that, ever.

The next day, Larry asks Lily if she has had any weird hair growth. She says she turned into a werewolf. Somehow Larry thinks she’s serious. She is not serious.

In class, Larry has to give a book report, he goes up to the front and is tripped by Howie. Howie is now bullying Larry. While on the ground, Larry realizes his hands are now hairy. Still lying on his stomach, Larry puts his hands in his pockets. He proceeds to climb to his feet with invisible hands.

I guess Larry has extra hands and arms, since the book describes this in a physically impossible way. Anyways, Larry runs out of class.

In the school hallway Larry screams, “No! Please No! Noooooooooo.” Turns out Larry is a fan of The Office. Despite his screaming, somehow nobody hears him. Sure.

The principal walks by and asks why Larry has gloves on. Somehow, the principal thinks hairy hands are gloves. Larry says he’s cold, and the principal replies they will send the furnace to the max, creating a living hell for all students. At least the principal cares.

Larry returns to class, and everyone thinks he has gloves on. What? How do people not know what hair is?

After school, Larry tries to tell his mom, but she’s on the phone, so he’s ignored. He decides just to hang out with his pet cat Jasper. Then he shaves his hands again.

The next day, Larry realizes he has no idea how to use a razor, since his hands are cut up. He then gets chased by dogs on his way to school. Luckily, Lily shows up and saves him.

Larry realizes his neck is now covered in hair. Kids proceed to ask him why he’s wearing a scarf. How does nobody realize this is hair? The world may never know.

Later in the day he has basketball in his gym class. When he enters the locker room to change, he hears Howie having a mental breakdown repeating, “In your face,” over and over again. This is never explained.

Larry now has hairy knees, so he plays in pants during basketball. Having hairy legs or knees is relatively normal, so I think Larry could play this off as either normal hair or leg warmers at this point.

The next day, Manny has gone missing and hasn’t shown up for school or band practice.

Lily and Larry go to Manny’s house. Only to find the house is empty. Well, I guess the Heffley’s went on a winter vacation. At this point, that must be a book in that series.

The next day, Larry is on a run with his dad in the woods. As they run through the woods Larry tells his dad about his hair growth. His dad grabs him and drags Larry out of the woods without saying a word. This is insane. I think Larry’s dad may need to calm down on his Leatherface impersonation.

They go to Dr. Murkin. His dad won’t talk to him on the way over. At Dr. Murkin’s Larry gets another shot. Dr. Murkin says the lotion didn’t cause the hair growth and not to worry.

On the ride home his dad still isn’t talking to him much. After this there is more band practice. They have become a Beatles cover band. Oh no, please, please, choose actually good music or at least something not so bland and generic like bad Ska music. Well, my opinion here probably doesn’t mean that much, but still, lame.

Larry tries telling the others about his hairy problem, but all of them laugh at him and don’t believe him. However, Lily seems to have a different reaction to this, but she doesn’t want to talk about this.

Later, Larry has forehead hair. He hurries home, but nobody is home. They gone.

He then heads back to where Lily’s house is at, to find the Insta-Tan. However, the dumpster he found it is gone. He realizes they through the bottle somewhere else, so he goes to find it. He luckily finds it on the ground.

Then a pack of dogs show up. Great, it’s the Cujo club. Larry tries to run away, but he falls over and the bottle breaks. He’s lost his evidence to give to Dr. Murkin. Then the dogs run away.

Larry throws the remains of the bottle at a tree. Anger management is not a priority for Larry.

He gets home and has grown more hair. He calls Lily, but nobody answers.

On Monday, Larry waits for Lily at school, but she doesn’t show up.

Howie sees Larry. He claims he’ll be a celebrity after winning the school’s battle of the bands. Sure, Howie, people really search for future celebrities at school talent shows, not.

Lily fails to show up to school. After school he’s followed by a dog to his house. When he gets to his house, he wants to keep the dog, but his mom says no.

Larry realizes the dog has Lily’s pirate gold necklace and the same eye color as her. She’s turned into a dog, but his mom doesn’t believe him about the details or the dog being Lily.

Larry goes to Lily’s house. Her family is packing and moving out. He then gets gaslit by her parents who say there never was a Lily and they don’t know what he’s talking about. Yeah, Larry is really going to believe that.

Larry’s parents barely talk to him at dinner and won’t talk about Lily. Average parental response in a Goosebumps book.

After dinner, Larry tells Jared and Kristina that Lily is gone. They decide they will now perform as a three-person band. At this point, they’re losing a member almost every day.

Kristina and Jared notice Larry is growing hair everywhere, but it’s spaghetti. What? How do you get those things confused? This whole story is confused.

The next day at the school’s talent show battle of the bands Howie and the Screamers perform first. Everyone likes their music, and they get a standing ovation. While playing generic rock.

They perform next with the band name The Geeks. This is an underwhelming name. They’re off key, don’t sound great, and Larry’s guitar is too loud.

At this point, just stop caring and start playing something that will be memorable. Maybe something like GG Allin or more musically significant like Napalm Death, you won’t win, but at least everyone will remember the performance.

Larry starts growing hair and everyone in the audience think it’s special effects. However, it’s not special effects and the music is still bad.

Larry runs away after the performance. However, their awful band won, because of special effects. What! That has nothing to do with the music or even be considered as the main thing to judge based off.

Anyways Larry gets home. His parents are surprised to see him, because he’s got hair growing everywhere. This is when the big reveal happens. Larry is a dog. Wow, isn’t that obvious.

His parents reveal they work for Dr. Murkin. He changes dogs into children. However, dogs don’t stay children long enough, so he’s moved onto cats. This raises a ton of legal, ethical, and philosophical questions. First, this can’t be legal. Second, ethically, how is this even right to do to an animal, and as shown later, the dogs retain their memories, so that’s pretty messed up. This may only be surface level, but the more you think about it, the worst it is.

Dr. Murkin has moved onto cats, since children revert after only 12 years, and it’s too hard on the parents. That’s why there are a bunch of stray dogs all over town.

Some time passes, and Larry is more or less a stray, with his old parents leaving food and water out for him sometimes. Also, he still has the mind of a human, but he can’t communicate, so that’s pretty awful. He sees his old parents with a new child, named Jasper.

Book ends.

Review:

This Goosebumps book sucks. It’s not scary, it’s not intelligibly written, and worst of all the story sucks through and through.

I’ll start out with the good in this Goosebumps entry. There’s good pacing, the title is true to the story, Larry is an okay protagonist, and there is a bit of creepiness in regard to the parents. The good is pretty limited.

The problems start with the story. It doesn’t make much sense. First, wouldn’t the school be suspicious about so many kids disappearing over the years or some type of investigation take place. Especially since it looks like the parents may have multiple dog children over the years. Next, clearly Dr. Murkin is running a pretty illegal business and wouldn’t someone have at some point looked into him or there would be a whistle blower after their kid turns into a dog.

The story itself is rather boring, and the tanning lotion is obviously not turning kids into dogs or making them grow hair. Especially since two of the kids never have side effects. The writing for the parents gives away the ending or much of it before it even happens. Also, the Dr. Murkin aspect of the story also gives away the twist.

The whole battle of the band’s subplot is rather lame and is forgotten throughout most of the book. For the first time, in a long time, for a Goosebumps entry, there are so many plot holes created by the premise of the story that everything falls apart.

This book is like growing a triple unibrow on your forehead while walking a pack of dogs all dragging you across a muddy path in the forest while your doctor in the background says it’s time to become the dog boy at the sixth-grade talent show.

Which that statement above is probably more exciting than the plot of this story.

The characters are so paper thin in this book that I can’t really talk about characterization. At least Howie is a jerk and that’s something, but he’s so inconsistent in this book that he only really becomes a bully when the plot specifically needs him to be a jerk. Otherwise, he has no personality.

If you want to read a Goosebumps book on puberty, don’t. This is not it and I hope no other Goosebumps book tries to do this again. The analogy is obvious, and tons of other people have made it before, but that is all this book has to offer.

I wonder if this book inspired Animorphs in any way?

I’ll give this Goosebumps entry a 2/10. This book is almost as offensively bad as Why I’m Afraid of Bees, but it suffers so much when it comes to characters and plot it ends up being on the same level. They should have called this one, Why I’m Afraid of Hair.

Twist ending:

Larry is a dog, and since he’s 12, he’s now a senior citizen. Also, his cat is now a child.

Memorable line:

“Then I found three people in the woods, and I ate them.” I guess Lily is now a cannibal.

Memorable moment, cliffhanger, etc:

Son, it’s time to have a talk about puberty. You’re a dog. Also, your cat is now our daughter.

Bad parenting:

The whole book. Literally, they turned a dog into a child and raised Larry, then abandon him when he reverts back to being a dog. His parents don’t have any ethics. Also, they’re now repeating the same thing with their cat.

Random references:

Rolling Stones, Beatles, Eric Clapton, Gibson, Chuck Berry, Trapper Keeper, Doc Martens, Raiders, Bruce Coville, Matt Christopher, Star Search, and Frosted Flakes. Is Stine contractually obligated to mention Frosted Flakes in every book?

Tropes in book:

Hair jump scare, character is 12, nobody believes a character’s crazy story, pranks, crazy cliffhangers, and sibling pair.

TV tie-in:

The Goosebumps adaptation for this episode remains largely unchanged. However, there are some differences.

All of the kids turn into dogs. There is no battle of the bands or school. It’s summer in the book. Larry grows hair at inopportune times such as at dinner instead of at a concert. He also jumps out a second story window to escape dinner. Larry sees everyone else become dogs first and interacts with those dogs before he becomes a dog. Kristina isn’t in the episode.

The ending is the same.

The special effects in this episode are pretty bad but limited. For example, the cat eyes on the baby at the end.

Also, there is a lot dubbing in this episode, since the lead actor had all of their lines dubbed. Also, a bit weird, but according to the script the entire town was sterilized, so they turn dogs into children. This is absolute nonsense, equally as unethical as the book if not more so, and how would this even happen? It doesn’t matter too much to the story, but still ridiculous.

It’s hard to say much about this episode since it’s a carbon copy. Not much is changed or fixed, so it’s essentially the same as the book. However, the episode does remove the awful battle of the bands subplot and has some unintentionally, or maybe intentionally hilarious lines (see below), so that’s at least good for this Goosebumps episode.

The acting is also good, and it does just enough to edge out the book.

I’ll give this episode of Goosebumps a 4/10. One of the few cases so far where the episode is better than the book. I don’t like this episode much, but it’s better than the book. At least it had a few enjoyable moments.

Memorable episode line:

“Back off!” Dies. Well, Larry didn’t make it far.

Bonus!

Larry: “I mean hair, like where you don’t expect to see it.”

Lily: “Are you growing unexpected hair?”

100% confirmed this Goosebumps episode is about puberty.

Famous cast:

Everyone in this episode was too embarrassed to be famous afterwards.

Come back soon for more Goosebumps fun and reviews.

To read the last Goosebumps review: https://goosebumpsblogger.com/goosebumps-25-attack-of-the-mutant/

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