My Hairiest Adventure

As the book opens, Larry Boyd is running from a pack of dogs. Larry slides across ice and snow as he races towards his friend Lily's house. Lily takes a snow shovel and she waves it around in a threatening manner. The dogs all scamper away.

Larry made the trek to Lily's house so that they and their friends Manny, Kristina, and Jared can rehearse for the upcoming Middle School Battle of the Bands. Their main competition is a band called Howie and the Shouters, a superior rock n' roll group led by the titular school jerk.

Larry’s band, the Geeks, consists of three guitars, a keyboard, and vocals. The Geeks work each other up with trash talk about Howie and the Shouters, joking about how horrible Howie's squeaking guitar sounds.

Larry has big ears and wavy blonde hair; Lily is blonde with bangs and her eyes are two different colors; Manny is tall; Kristina is fat; Jared plays keyboards and always wears a Raiders cap.

After running through a couple classic rock songs, the kids decide to take ten and go play in the snow. While digging through Lily's neighbor's trash, Larry comes across a discarded medicine cabinet. He retrieves a bottle of INSTA-TAN. All five members of the band think that it would be really awesome to get a fake tan. They excitedly race into the bathroom and take turns squirting the liquid on their bodies. No one cares when Larry expresses concern over the fact that the INSTA-TAN expired in 1991.

Manny pretends to peel off his skin, only to reveal that it was merely a wet Kleenex. The gang makes its way back outside and participates in a snowball fight. Larry loses consciousness and collapses. Dr. Murkin gives Larry his regular bi-monthly shot and reminds the boy that he's not supposed to overexert himself, as he doesn't have sweat glands. After his injection, Larry races back to the snowball party only to discover that Howie came by to gloat about having bought an Eric Clapton songbook for the contest.

That night Larry is simply exhausted. But before he can drift off to sleep, he's shocked to discover a thick patch of hair growing on his palm. He races to the bathroom. He lathers up and shaves his palm.

The next morning, Larry is paranoid about his hair growth. Everyone already calls him "Hairy Larry." He tries asking Lily if she experienced the same thing, since he's attributing this growth to the fake tan they all used. Lily jokes that she is a werewolf. In class, Howie gives a book report on a Matt Christopher novel. Howie's oral report is awful but he's Howie, so he manages to ace it. Larry goes up to give his Bruce Coville report but Howie trips him. While picking himself up off the ground, Larry notices the hair has grown back around his hands, this time covering both palms. He runs out into the hall and retrieves his gloves from his locker.

Larry begins to experience hair growth on the knees, hands, arms, and across the forehead. Manny disappears and a dog with the same shaggy hair as Manny joins the pack of dogs that runs around the small town. When Larry goes to investigate, he discovers Manny's house is completely empty. He can't figure out why he left, but of course his biggest concern is that now the Geeks only have two guitar players instead of three.

Things go from bad to worse when Lily also disappears. He meets a dog that has the same eyes as Lily. When Larry tries to talk to her parents, they quickly drive away, but not before insisting they never knew any Lily. Now down to one guitar player, the Geeks must make a difficult decision as the Battle of the Bands approaches. The remaining kids ultimately decide that regardless of the dwindling size of their band, the show must go on. Triumphantly, they declare that they'll do it for Lily.

Finally the night of the Battle of the Bands arrives. Since Howie and the Shouters went on first and were even called back for an encore, the bar was set pretty high for the Geeks. The Geeks win the Battle of the Bands on the strength of their special effects. While performing, Larry's entire face gets covered in hair. Ashamed, Larry runs home and tells his parents what happened. That’s when his parents inform him that he is a dog.

Dr. Murkin developed a way of turning dogs into children and then giving them to his employees. The twice-monthly injections were booster shots of the serum, but after a dozen years, the formula loses its effect. Everyone in the town works for Dr. Murkin but he does not want to turn dogs into children anymore. The book ends with Larry's parents bringing home a newborn baby girl named Jasper, the name of Larry’s cat. The baby has Jasper's yellow eyes.