Publisher's Synopsis
When Vextor, a manufactured shape shifter, comes to life onboard a Kestrian space station, he begins leaving his tasks to go play with children and terrorize adults. He is finally trapped and sent on his way to a penal colony on a nearby icy planet. He outsmarts the navigation and heads for Earth instead, shrinking himself so he can land inside a plastic pumpkin on a driveway.
A small child brings the pumpkin into the house, and Vextor lives in secret with two children, Freddie and Lydia. But problems arise. He looks like a monkey and can only turn into humans with pink skin and leafy hair. So how is he to fit in? And after tasting his very first candy, he becomes utterly addicted to sweets, tearing through the area and stealing from anywhere he can as an odd assortment of alien creatures. Halloween is in a heap of trouble. Vextor befriends Professor Ben McDilly, whom he visits as the astute yet unusual Sherlock Holmes. The pink Mr. Holmes lets McDilly in on a shocking secret: how the "Vextor KR-II Shape Shifter" came to life. And when Amanda, the children's mother, finally discovers the little ape living in their house, she too is moved by his secret and decides to help him. Amanda and Ben finally meet after being bewitched by Vextor's energy source, and they fall in love. But after the effects wear off, will they feel the same? As Amanda and Ben cope with new feelings, Vextor does away with Freddie's birthday cake during the night. To avenge himself, Freddie tricks him into turning into a dung beetle, and Vextor spends three days in a horse pasture, happily eating a thick and chewy substance. When he realizes what he's been eating, he returns to "teach Freddie a lesson." Tempers collide, and the turning point arrives. Will Vextor finally decide to become a real member of the family? Will he stop abandoning them to steal candy? If so, how will he be able to live among them as a human instead of a monkey? And when a lovely young woman moves in next door, how will he cope with being in love with someone he can never really be with? What Vextor does in the end is nothing anyone can prepare for.
