Lunch Walks Among Us

Lunch Walks Among Us  is the first book in the Franny K. Stein book series.

Plot
We are introduced to the main character Franny K. Stein, a little girl mad scientist who lives in the pink house with lovely purple shutters down at the end of Daffodil Street.

Franny goes to a new school, where she has trouble getting along with the other children, but is encouraged to keep trying by her teacher Miss Shelly. After taking notes, Franny concludes that she must change herself into a normal girl and does so by drinking a potion made of cutesy ingredients.

All goes well at first, but chaos ensues when a Pumpkin Crab Monster appears and causes trouble by kidnapping Miss Shelly and climbing up the flagpole. Franny realizes the fiend was created earlier from dumping her lunch of crab ravioli with pumpkin sauce into the trash and other kids dumping old gym shoes, chewing gum and unstable industrial waste into the same trash can.

Franny doesn't want to risk losing her new friends, so she tries to calmly instruct the other kids on how they can stop the Pumpkin Crab Monster, but is unable to get through to the hoards of screaming and panicking children. It is then that Franny realizes that she needs to be herself, so she downs the antidote to her normal girl potion and demands that the kids hand over their lunches.

Franny ends up creating a Lunch Meat Creature from the meat in the kids' sandwiches, who helps defeat the Pumpkin Crab Monster, with Miss Shelly's fall broken by a pile of the bread that was used in the kids' sandwiches.

The next day, Franny finds that the Lunch Meat Creature has helped repair the damages done to the school and now works for the school, with the children still willing to be her friend because they're grateful for Franny saving the day.