Not too long ago, I found myself in a room full of Olde Millennials. And I casually made a deep-cut joke that was only understandable to those who’d read the Animorphs series. I think it was something about Yeerks? Or Andalites? Possibly it was just the admission that Cinnabon is the peak of all human arts and sciences!
The reaction in the room was instantaneous: gasps of recognition, faces lit with excitement. Ohhhhh my god, Animorphs, my childhooooooood! But the joke bounced harmlessly off my husband, who’d never read them. I’m not going to lie: it crushed my soul and I considered divorce.
My partner has never been much of a reader. I’m honestly not sure why, because he is exactly the kind of person you would expect to have been a voracious reader in childhood: a contemplative, dreamy person who imagines deeply and curiously. I seethe with quiet rage when I watch him watch his twentieth hour of YouTube videos exploring Dark Souls lore. How is it possible that no one pressed Garth Nix novels into your hands?
Reading was always a refuge for me. When my life wasn’t what I wanted it to be, I could climb inside someone else’s. As George R. R. Martin says: “A reader lives a thousand lives before he dies. The man who never reads lives only one.” I can’t imagine what kind of person I would be if I hadn’t read the books I did.
Today I want to talk about six lives I climbed inside again and again when I was a child: Jake, Rachel, Marco, Tobias, Cassie, and Aximili-Esgarrouth-Isthill. AKA (ah, Katherine Applegate) the Animorphs.
I picked them up again recently, expecting to dodge dated references and cringey cultural throwbacks. But to my electric delight, this twenty-year-old series has never felt fresher or more relevant. As a successful Internet Person, I only want to leverage my platform for the things that really matter—like trying to get more people to read a 90s book series about elephants beating up aliens. It’s a calculated decision. This shit matters.
Animorphs is a story made for life in Donald Trump’s America.
Reading Animorphs today
In an act of supreme marital trust, I began reading some of my most treasured books aloud to my partner. On long car trips, I taught him what could make a unicorn feel regret. During tedious airport waits, I whispered important translations: a single dot in Tralfamadorian, and the Hebrew word “timshel.” Sitting in the hammock of our yard, surrounded by a blazing chorus of cicadas, I revealed the profound secret of what makes dæmons stop changing. They’re nice memories now, for both of us.
Obviously the whole reading aloud thing wouldn’t work for Animorphs, a long-running series of 64 books. But I asked if I could read him the first scene—just the first scene!—of the first book. Just to give him a taste.
He listened with the respectful curiosity a husband owes to his wife’s childhood obsessions. So I read a little more, and a little more. And I wallowed, smug as a pig in its own shit, as his reactions grew from tepid “wows” and “woahs” to explosive “hooooooly shits” and “what the fucks!?”
Long story short, we’re 29 books deep and driving ever onward. This shit is good, y’all. Here are just a few reasons why.
Please note: the rest of this article will contain spoilers. But they will be the least spoilery spoilers I can manage. I’ll talk about broad plot points, but give no specifics that would steal your surprise or enjoyment.
We should never have been allowed to read these books
“I felt my throat tighten and constrict. My hearts ached with a pain I could not describe. I wondered if I were dying. l felt not sadness. I felt pity. For myself. For us all. We were children no longer. And we never would be again.”
– The Sacrifice
Lots of people have told me their parents bought them Animorphs because the covers promised stories about kids who can turn into tigers and fight aliens. And they’re not wrong?
Broadly, Animorphs is the story of five children taking a shortcut through an abandoned construction site one night. An alien ship lands in front of them, and a benevolent alien prince tumbles out, badly injured and dying. With the last of his strength, he warns the children that their planet is already under attack from a parasitic alien race, which is quietly pulling an Invasion of the Body Snatchers type of situation on the human race.
Reinforcements won’t arrive for one to two years. By then, it will be too late. So our dying alien friend gives the children access to a forbidden super-advanced technology: the ability to morph into animals.
There are limitations. They can only morph into a living creature they’ve physically touched. And they can’t stay in a morph for more than two hours or they’re trapped forever. Their only goal is to stall the invasion until the cavalry comes.
Sounds fun, right?
But if our parents had ever cracked those books, they would’ve found stuff they almost certainly didn’t think we were ready for. The Animorphs series ran from 1996 to 2001. It’s shocking that this story came from a pre-9/11 world. Applegate has a perspective on the world, and it’s…dark.
Talk down to children and children will know it
According to Wikipedia: “horror, war, dehumanization, sanity, morality, innocence, leadership, freedom, and growing up are the core themes of the series.” That’s all true, but it kinda only scratches the surface?
Like, in these books, a child realizes he is losing a fight, and has to run for his life while holding his intestines in, which are spilling out from his abdominal wounds. And die-hard fans of the series won’t know which scene I’m talking about here, because that level of brutal violence is so commonplace that this exact thing happens more than once.
So many worse things happen. Children kill each other—more than once. On more than one occasion, children are tortured until they beg for the release of death. Children make a choice to sacrifice the lives of other children, while we ride around in their heads absorbing the agonizing weight of that decision—you guessed it, more than once!
These books offered an uncompromisingly brutal vision of the way the universe works. The vividness of that brutality made other children’s literature seem colorless. I suddenly saw the cushy plot armor protecting Meg Murry, and the blocky simplicity of Alanna’s gender conformity issues. Who were they compared to Rachel? Rachel, who pushes aside the identity society reflexively assigns her, and finds not a noble and heroic self, but a terrifying bottomless capacity for violence?
Animorphs never speaks down to children, as its heroes or as its readers.
When adults fail to act, their children pay the price
Our heroes are around 13 years old when the story begins, and 16 when it concludes. The things they do in those three years are absolutely incredible. But those incredible things change them—some for the better, others for the worse. And they never lose the authenticity that lives at the core of each voice.
Our heroes are six children. Five of them are human, and one of them is an Andalite, a youthful representative of the universe’s “good guy” species.
When the series starts, the Yeerks (you guessed it, the universe’s “bad guy” species) have already begun their quiet invasion of Earth. Initially, the Animorphs assume they are only holding the line while the adults get their shit together. But soon it becomes terribly clear that the groundwork for the invasion was laid by the complicity of their elders within both species.
And boy, that’s some #relatablecontent.
In Animorphs, as in the real world, the institutions we consider to be paragons of morality can still disappoint us with apathy, bureaucracy, pettiness, and greed. Adults make a lot of promises in these books and fail to deliver on almost all of them.
Children today are more anxious and depressed than ever before. Animorphs validates the impossibly unfair inheritances we’ve gifted them: a planet in crisis, turmoil among our allies, enemies not at the gates but well past them, smiling comfortably upon our thrones. Applegate knows that we live in a world that loves to kick the can down the road, and shrewdly concocts a world in which we have officially run out of road—and it’s children who are left holding the bag.
The bag… with a can in it? Whatever. I did not mix those metaphors, I gently folded them!
Power comes with a terrible cost
I was always a little hit-or-miss with the superhero genre. Like, most of the X-Men’s problems had little to do with blasting laser beams outta their eyes and a lot to do with cheating on their wives. That bugged the hell out of me.
Animorphs, by contrast, kept the team’s struggles tightly aligned with their direct situation. Spending time as not-humans leads them to question their intrinsic humanity. Although their morphing power allows them to heal most injuries, the psychological impact of those injuries remain. When one of the Animorphs becomes trapped in the form of a red-tailed hawk, he wants to eat mice and fuck other hawks.
Their superpowers come with serious price tags. All of the Animorphs have PTSD to different degrees. They process their feelings about the war very differently. Jake becomes anxious; Marco, cynical; Cassie, idealistic; Ax, confused; Tobias, avoidant; Rachel, violent.
Holy shit, people are different?
Each novel is one long monologue, delivered from one child (the protagonist) directly to another (the reader). This intimate narration creates room to showcase all of these coping strategies. Take, for instance, Jake’s characterization of what seems to be the Animorphs’ first kill of a human character, in the very first book.
Cassie had gotten away clean. It had been the suspicious Controller policeman who had grabbed her. He was the only Controller to know her name, where she lived, and that she had been spying on The Sharing. Cassie said we didn’t have to worry about him anymore.
She didn’t want to talk about what had happened to him.
– The Invasion
Gentle Cassie, we can presume, accidentally-on-purpose stove his head in with a kick from her horse morph. Jake is too focused on the justified ends to push himself or Cassie to examine the means. It’s a blink-and-you’ll-miss-it moment, by Jake’s design.
In Cassie’s own head, she gives herself no such breaks.
I wish I could tell you my whole name. Because that would mean I was a nice, normal girl. But I’m not either one. Not nice. Not normal.
Okay, my friends think I’m nice. Marco is always calling me a tree-hugger. And even though I don’t actually hug trees, I do care about them. Which makes me nice, right? A girl who cares about trees can’t be anything but nice.
Unless that girl has also ripped a living creature’s throat out with her bare teeth. Which I have.
I was in wolf morph, deep in battle. Seven Hork-Bajir against six of us. Jake gave the order to retreat. And either right before he said it, or right after, I yanked the throat out of the Hork-Bajir I was fighting.
I hope it was right before. I hope that I didn’t go in for the kill when I could have just run. But I’m not sure.
That’s why I don’t think I qualify as nice. You’ve probably already gotten a clue why I don’t qualify as normal.
– The Departure
Cassie here is recounting an incident that happened eight books previously—several in-world months. Every act of violence for her is a big fucking deal. She’s courageous in facing her own depravity, and she understands intellectually why she did it. Even if she’s moved past her initial reflexive self-loathing, she recognizes that violence has fundamentally changed her.
Marco has a strong sense of self preservation, and is rarely bothered by his own violence. When it’s his only choice, he makes it and doesn’t feel bad about it later. One does what one must do to survive.
But when the opportunity to fight presents itself, Rachel never hesitates. She shoots to kill easily, instinctively. And it isn’t her own capacity for violence that disturbs her—it’s her complete lack of remorse. She knows that it’s probably wrong, but why does it feel like she’s doing what she was born to do?
Every character has a different set of values, desires, and fears. Every character processes differently. Reading Animorphs when I was young helped me build empathy for other people’s perspectives. As a Marco/Rachel-ish type of person, I couldn’t believe Cassie’s capacity for idealistic moralizing. (Girl, there’s a war on!) But over time, I recognized the value of those diverse perspectives in strengthening the team.
Authority cannot be trusted
The Animorphs’ enemies are the Yeerks. They’re parasitic aliens that can enter the brain through the ear canal and assume direct control of the host’s body. They can freely access memories to mimic everything about that host. They’ve conquered three other species, and mankind is their next goal.
The Yeerks prefer to keep their invasion quiet until they gain critical infection mass. To facilitate this, they intentionally seek to infect powerful people—people in law enforcement, news media, politics, finance, the military… Once humanity learns of the threat, it will be too late. The institutions meant to shield mankind become a sword to strike them down.
It’s a good strategy. It’s the actual strategy employed by lots of unsavory movements and groups. (Wait, did Animorphs pave the way for young people to believe in Q Anon…? Ugh. I digress.) I’m not someone who’s skeptical of every powerful person and institution. But I learned to be very skeptical of the reasons that people claim to want power, and how they claim to intend to use it once they have it.
To adapt, the Animorphs and their eventual allies must become self-driven and self-reliant. They must fight to preserve their freedom with their own hands. And claws. And hooves, and talons, and fins. God, these books rock.
Evil hides beneath the surface of everyday interactions
Very early on in the first book, we learn that Jake’s brother has already been taken and made into a host for a Yeerk. Jake pretends not to know, and watches his puppet-brother subtly, slyly work against his family and friends. Isolating them, entrapping them, aligning them with his alien sensibilities.
Every Animorph eventually has someone close to them taken. Most end up sitting across the dinner table from their enemy.
This anxiety speaks to our times more than it did in the books’ original run. Fascism, authoritarianism, and xenophobia are rising across every continent. Sixty-two million of my fellow Americans willingly voted to elect a disgustingly hateful autocrat. Everywhere I go, I cast my eyes around the room and try to guess—who’s hiding ugly thoughts behind smiling eyes?
Who around me thinks that immigrants are criminals? That poor people are stupid and lazy? That women love to lie about being raped? When people have such abhorrent thoughts, they rarely have the temerity to state them openly. They hide until they feel strong enough to go unchallenged.
The Yeerks initially seem to be evil for evil’s sake. And our Big Bad, Visser Three, serves full-on, campy, mustache-twirling realness. But the scariest part about the Yeerks is when you talk to one and it… starts making sense. In their natural form, they can’t enjoy the worldly pleasures that make life worth living. Doesn’t it seem fair for them to covet our bodies?
“Most of you humans don’t even know what you have. You have the most beautiful planet in the galaxy. No other place is so alive. In no other place are there so many trees, so many flowers, so many amazing creatures. You live in a palace. You live in paradise, and you hate me for wanting to live there, too.”
– The Departure
All of this makes Yeerks a frighteningly apt metaphor for the banality of normalized evil.
Everything’s burning, but this is fine
It’s crucial that the Animorphs maintain their secret identities. If they’re captured, they will certainly become powerful tools of their enemies.
So they go to school. They have dinner with their families. To discuss tactics and strategy, they sit in plain sight at the mall, looking to all the world like a normal group of teens just hanging out. They scribble bullshit essays on bullshit topics between life-and-death encounters. They meticulously craft their lives so that everything appears normal.
If you don’t relate to that, you haven’t been paying attention.
When I was a little kid and I first learned about the Holocaust, I remember a teacher asking: “If we saw our neighbors being dragged away, what would we do? Fight? Or turn and look the other way?”
I so confidently said that I would fight. Now my country is throwing people into cages like filthy animals. And I’m going to work and paying bills and cutting the grass and fixing my toilet and watching Netflix. Sure, I’m talking about what’s happening both on social media and in-person. I’m thinking about it. I’m voting against the party and policies perpetrating it. Does that amount to a fight? I know the answer, and I’m ashamed of it.
Animorphs is a long meditation on the nature of power. Our heroes are trapped in the most significant crisis in human history, but bound by the mundane realities of daily life. The Yeerk threat specifically appeals to our collective desire to sit back, live our lives as usual, and pretend that everything is fine.
K. A. is killing me with this shit.
Humanity isn’t necessarily worth saving
“Humans. Violent but peace-loving. Passionate but cerebral. Humane but cruel. Impulsive but calculating. Generous but selfish. Humans. Altogether a contradictory and deeply flawed species. And yet… and yet, somehow I knew that they represented the best hope of the galaxy. Perhaps the only hope.”
– The Sacrifice
Even as the Animorphs try to save humanity, Applegate reminds us that not all humans deserve it.
Just as the good guys aren’t uniformly good and the bad guys aren’t uniformly bad, the territory they fight over (that’d be mankind) is often portrayed as an ugly, dirty patch of scrubland no one should want anyhow. There are psychopaths and chickenshits and sellouts and profiteers among us, and they occasionally cause more destruction than the evil aliens.
I know a lot of people who have hearts overflowing with the desire to do good in the world. They jump into careers as teachers, counselors, activists, environmentalists, and all manner of not-for-profit do-gooders. And on more occasions than I can count, I’ve seen them get worn down by the relentless parade of extremely unhelpful people they meet along the way. People who aren’t honest, aren’t engaged, aren’t listening, aren’t caring… It’s enough to make you want to quit.
Every Animorph grapples with the decision to give up or keep going. Implicit in this is the question: is our species worth saving? Again and again, they decide that it is, though it’s never without debate.
Humor can’t save our lives, but it can save our souls
“Humans have very odd tastes. They think their music is beautiful. They are wrong. It is awful. All of it. And they completely ignore their greatest accomplishments: the cinnamon bun, the Snickers bar, the hot pepper, and the refreshing beverage called vinegar.”
– The Alien
It probably doesn’t sound like it, but the Animorphs books are blessedly funny.
- Visser One initially thought Star Trek was nonfiction, and wanted to avoid humans forever, fearing their incredible technological prowess.
- Ax is glimpsed in his true form by some children, who insist he is a Pokemon and try to capture him for training purposes.
- Cassie is so bad at lying, when asked to give a fake phone number, she writes down “123-45678.”
The books are funny as hell—because they have to be. Without humor, the rest of the material is too relentlessly grim to be endured. Applegate knows when we need jokes about “happy meals with extra happy.”
The best humor is the humor that illustrates the absurdity of ourselves as human beings. In a standalone prequel, an alien marvels at the fact that humans walk upright on two legs, without tails to act as a counterbalance. (When you think about it, this is extremely unusual, even on our own planet.) He thinks about how easily we could be knocked over. And he imagines that Earth must be a delightfully funny place, with people falling over all the time. And he laughs, and he laughs, and he laughs.
He finally gets to visit Earth one day. And when he does, he’s captured by hostile forces, who eat him alive. Wet, raw pieces of him rain down on our thirteen-year-old protagonists, who are hiding in terror nearby.
That’s the first scene of Animorphs—the one I made my husband read. Just to give him a taste.
A TASTE OF HELL.
Y’all gotta read these books
Like the half-animal, half-human figures on their covers, Animorphs is an unsettling amalgamation of unlike things. Peacetime and war. Humor and horror. Self-reliance and interdependence. Adult fears and childhood comforts.
I really can’t recommend them highly enough. There’s a pleasing minimum of cringey ideas that have aged poorly. It’s like wading through a river of gold and finding the occasional odd turd floating on the surface. It’s well worth it!
If I’ve piqued your interest, you’ll be happy to know you can read all Animorphs books online, for free, right now. Go here.
I know what you’re thinking—us? Pirating the work of artists?! Unfortunately, the majority of the books are out of print. As long as this is the case, Applegate herself has blessed the downloading and sharing of the files.
“We do not take them down. Or ask for them to be taken down. I think once the books are available to buy—paper or e—it would be nice if people who could afford it would buy. (Our kids have very expensive tastes. You know: food and whatnot.) But for years they’ve been unavailable except by “pirated” means. These men and women kept the series alive. They kept the books available.”
– K. A. Applegate
I knew I loved ya, Kathy.
BGR’s official Animorphs reading guide
The series had a rather famous sophomore slump where Scholastic demanded more books, and Applegate passed off writing duties to ghost writers. With that in mind, I’ve prepared a reading guide below.
Read in this order. The struck-through ones can be skipped. Go to the wikis and read the summary instead. All based on my personal opinion, with which I invite arguing!
- #1 The Invasion
- #2 The Visitor
- #3 The Encounter
- #4 The Message
- #5 The Predator
- #6 The Capture
- #7 The Stranger
Megamorphs #1: The Andalite’s Gift- #8 The Alien
#9 The Secret- #10 The Android
#11 The Forgotten#12 The Reaction- The Andalite Chronicles
- #13 The Change
#14 The Unknown- #15 The Escape
- #16 The Warning
#17 The Underground- #18 The Decision
Megamorphs #2: In the Time of Dinosaurs- #19 The Departure
- #20 The Discovery
- #21 The Threat
- #22 The Solution
- The Hork-Bajir Chronicles
- #23 The Pretender
#24 The Suspicion#25 The Extreme- #26 The Attack
#27 The Exposed#28 The Experiment- #29 The Sickness
Megamorphs #3: Elfangor’s Secret- #30 The Reunion
#31 The Conspiracy#32 The Separation- #33 The Illusion
- #34 The Prophecy
#35 The Proposal- Visser
#36 The Mutation#37 The Weakness#38 The Arrival#39 The Hidden#40 The OtherMegamorphs #4: Back to Before#41 The Familiar#42 The Journey- #43 The Test
#44 The Unexpected- #45 The Revelation
- #46 The Deception
- #47 The Resistance
- #48 The Return
- #49 The Diversion
- #50 The Ultimate
- #51 The Absolute
- #52 The Sacrifice
- #53 The Answer
The Ellimist Chronicles- #54 The Beginning
So, Bitch Nation! Do you remember this series? Who was your favorite Animorph? Did you, like one of my IRL friends, highlight all of the romantic scenes for Jake and Cassie (in green) and Tobias and Rachel (in pink) so you could instantly access the schmoop at any time??
Have I successfully lit the fire within you to check them out?
What other children’s and middle-grade lit inspired the shit out of you?
Tell us about it in the comments below!
Metamorphs #4 is one of my favourite books in the whole series! (#33 is my top top) That strike through hurts my heart but I understand.
Two questions: Which book is your favourite and did you ever watch the TV show? I only saw a few episodes as a kid and I’m rewatching it now (cuz I’m on am Animorphs podcast and we’ve decided to torture ourselves haha)
I knowwww, I went back and forth on that one. This is my bias: I have a short fuse for time-travel books and alternate timeline books. It’s like, “here’s a good story, but none of it mattered in the end because everything went back to normal!” But of all of those kinds of books, MM4 probably has the most interesting character moments for everyone.
The book I reread the most as a kid was the Andalite Chronicles. Elfangor is such a good dude, love that good good blue boy. Rereading them as an adult has definitely shifted my stance on some of them. I remember loathing The Departure because Cassie’s choices seemed so cowardly and foolish. And, uh, they still definitely are. But as an adult, I have a much greater appreciation for the bravery and moral clarity those (bad) decisions required.
I did watch the teevee show as a kid! Mostly I remember being really disappointed that it obviously had a production budget of $0.80 per episode. It’s probably whatever they spent on Hey Dude! and other live-action shows that had way fewer effects, sets, and actors. I’d love to see it redone as an animated show, or a prestige streaming show with a Stranger Things budget. Sigh… A girl can dream.
Thanks for reading! I’m doing some housepainting this week and will 1,000% queue up some Animorphs podcasts while I work!!
Honestly, if they didn’t shy away from the brutality, which the original show most certainly did, they’d have some amazing source material to work with.
I was OBSESSED with this series as a pre-teen and I must have re read them twenty odd times by the end of my teen years. Between my brother and I we pooled our pocket money to buy every single book and we’d squabble over who got to read them first.
That said, I never really thought about how fucking horrifying the content was until I became an adult who went back to re-read bits of the series or I saw meta analysis of it online. These books were fucked yo! But such an incredible goddamn series. I agree that it’s still hella relevant, especially for you guys in the states but also to a lesser extent to us here in Australia.
Must be time for a re-read. Or maybe I can convince my fiancee to read them with me!
Oh man… I remember carefully managing my money to get as many as I could. I had such an in-depth strategy. Library competition was fierce for these, and our librarians hated stocking them (why?!), so if I wanted to read them, I really needed to buy them. Everything was cheaper if I could get it at a Scholastic book fair, so I’d try to hold out. In between those, my parents used to take me to the bookstore for an hour at a time. If the latest book seemed like filler, I’d blaze through it in 1-2 store visits. (Sorry for contributing to your downfall, Barnes & Nobel!) If it seemed important, I’d slide in with the puppy dog eyes and beg for them to buy it for me, which I knew I couldn’t do too often. The David trilogy almost broke me, because I knew I was pushing it but I NEEDED TO KNOW WHAT WOULD HAPPEN NEXT.
…All of this is hilarious to me now, considering I think they were like literally less than $5 a pop.
I never picked them up because of the hokey covers – they looked like another Digimon or Pokémon knockoff – but my library has the ebooks on Overdrive! Guess what I’m reading next!
Thank GOD for those covers! They kept those nosy adults out of our adolescent body horror/torture porn hellscape.
This reminds me… Animorphs was great about always including real-time pop cultural references. You could plot exactly when certain books happened because they make a Titanic joke, or mention a weird commercial that only ran for one summer. There is a memorable Pokemon reference in a later book where Ax (our ride-or-die alien pal, who resembles a blue deer-centaur with a giant scorpion tail) is spotted by some little kids.
Marco, Marco, Marco. It hurts my heart to see his books crossed out. Love my sarcastic genius strategist who lies to himself constantly.
I know, I know… If I have to read retreads or filler, let it be Marco or Ax. Those good boys kept me enterturnt.
Wow! I’ve never heard of these books until now. Though I was a voracious reader, I never explored sci-fi type books. This series sounds fascinating and I can’t wait to read it. Thanks for sharing!
gotta read them again! thanks for reviving my childhood! I’ll have to read through every single book again just to contend against why you crossed some of those…
but I am equally pleased that I can find them now!
Soooo good. I thought I was alone in my love of Animorphs. My favorite is Ax. Love your comparison to real life, but as in real life, things don’t just happen in a few years, what has been happening has been slowly building up over years/ administrations. This is just the one that has the crazy most on the surface.
So true. The Yeerks are already here ;________;
In my reread, Ax just acquired television. So many good jokes. His favorite show is commercials (which he calls These Messages). He also likes The Young and The Restless, though he does not understand what makes them so restless. Ax books are #blessed.
I never read Animorphs, but I remember snagging a copy of Applegate’s “Everworld: Search for Senna” from the book fair when I was in 7th grade or so. I was about halfway through when my mom got curious, read the first few chapters and said “I don’t think this is appropriate for you.” Sadly, the library didn’t have a copy I could sneak during the school day. But they did have Wild Magic, which I devoured, along with several of Pierce’s other books. I still have Trickster’s Choice and Trickster’s Queen in my personal library.
Thank you for the link to the PDF files! I had forgotten about Everworld until I looked at the website you linked! Now I have hours of binge reading to look forward to. 🙂
Ooooooh, I think I started reading Everworld around fifth grade… And it was soooooooo racy and juicy. I devoured them, and I was fascinated by the characters, but way too young to relate to any of their problems.
I agree, I was still a bit young to understand all the implications of Everworld, but I think I would have developed my reading comprehension a bit faster if I wasn’t made to take a step “down” the ladder to Pierce’s books. (This is NOT a dig at Tamara Pierce, her books are great but her writing style is a bit simpler than Applegate’s.)
I glanced over several of my old favorites the other day at the library. Trickster’s Choice is still engaging and I actually got lost for an hour or so. However, T.A. Barron, as much as the Merlin books grabbed me, boy oh boy does the reading level not hold up to adult solo reading! Should I ever have kids I think it will be a series I read out loud to them or introduce as solo books in elementary school.
However, he did re-release the books after several other books were retroactively added to the Saga, and I highly suspect he updated some things. I don’t remember the books being half so simplistic. I WISH I still had my original copies to compare them to! The old cover art was awesome too.
I have to say, I disagree with a fair amount of the reading guide. MM1 has excellent characterisation.
Andalite Chronicles should not be read until after book 23. Yes, I know it was published first. No, I don’t care.
Book 16’s fly trauma thing was a big deal, and the cannibal yeerk is excellent. 17 introduces the Gleet Biofilter, one of the biggest fandom morality debates, and both it and 16 are part of the reason for Cassie quitting in 19.
24 and 35 might not be much for the wider story, but they are fantastic breather episodes, and the latter advances Marco’s characterisation. They’re worth reading, in my opinion.
31 is a big deal for Jake’s character development, while 38 is a big deal for Ax’s, and helps with the complexity of the enemy of the enemy not necessarily being friends (stop yeerks infesting humans by driving humans extinct).
I’m also not sure why 47 and 48 are included in that list of to-read. Sure, they’re endgame, but they’re not really that big a deal. Same for 34, which is chock full of stuff that should be gamechangers but never come up again.
I also feel that MM2 is important for Tobias’ characterization, MM3 for Ax and Cassie, and MM4 for everyone.
That’s an awesome summary/comparison with today’s world! I hope many people will stumble on your post and that it will either fill them with Animorphs nostalgia, or give them a taste for the books (if they haven’t read them yet!)
We could probably argue about this for hours and everyone would have a different opinion, but I think The Warning (#16) is one of the best book of the series. Of course, reading that book today, it’s filled with 1990s-era cringy tech and I can understand how unrealistic the whole “fake AOL” “chatroom trap” plot is. But when you put all of that aside and focus on the characters, the “vilain” (Joe Bob Fenestre – lol) of that book is, it’s one of the darkest books and the dialogue between Jake & Cassie during the final confrontation presents a very interesting moral dilemma to the reader. Like ANONAMOUSE said, Jake’s trauma of nearly dying as a fly is excellent – I remember reading this moment of the book and feeling so terrified for him as he was describing how he nearly dies, in real-time.
I also agree with ANONAMOUSE (comment above) that MM2 is a very important book for Tobias’s character, as well as the Rachel/Tobias ship (it’s in that book that she realizes Tobias identifies more as a hawk than as a human). It was also just fascinating to get a crash course in Dinosaurs 101 from an Animorphs perspective 🙂
Aside from the cultural and technological references, I don’t think these books will ever “age” too much. I’m sure you could give them a few kids in 20-30 years and they will be into the series. Some people argue that it’s unrealistic to read these books now since we live in a world of constant surveillance (streets cameras, surveillance cameras in every building, etc.) – but these things were already present in the late 1990s, they were just ignored by KA/Grant, so it’s not a huge deal IMO.
Thanks again for this great post 🙂
Hadn’t heard about QAnon before, because I try to avoid the news as much as possible. I know, I’m ashamed, too. But it isn’t good for my mental health! So I just learned all about QAnon, and honestly, if it were true, I wouldn’t be surprised at this point. What I take issue with is their belief that electing Trump is going to solve the problem lolololololol. He’s probs the kingpin. That cheeto skin screams pedo.
LOVED these books as a kid, and I’m SO GLAD you posted the link to them online, cause I don’t remember them very well and now I want to re-read them!
Also, did anyone else just realize that The Host is a ripoff of Animorphs?
Thing I never thought I would say, least of all as a 34-year-old woman: Animorphs sound too intense for me.
Fantasy wasn’t my jam as a kid; and even as an adult, it generally requires more “suspension of all disbelief” than I can muster. However, given that we’re apparently living in some topsy-turvy alternate reality where Cheetos take over and fuck up everything, I’ll give them a try.
Thanks for the recommendation!
You are such an amazing writer! I’ve been an Animorphs megafan from the beginning as well :’D are there any other articles floating around about the series that you recommend??
I LOVED this series but never would admit it or talk about it due to the shamefully silly covers. I wouldn’t even bring them to school for my “in between classes” book. I didn’t own any of them, but read the entire series thanks to our stupendous library. Fun fact, my sister and I were the inspiration behind a new check-out limit rule at our local library: you could only check out four books max from a single series per visit. We could fudge it a little bit, with me checking out four of her Nancy Drews on my card, and her checking out four of my Animorphs on hers, so we at least got 8 at a time.
Our all time favorite book from our youth that we both reread dozens of times was so little known I’ve never met anyone else who has heard of it… The Power of the Rellard. I know, I know. But it’s great!
So, my wife and I have been long time Animorphs fans, and actually found a blog recapping the books while it was still being written. http://cinnamonbunzuh.blogspot.com/ They make some fairly good points, especially about the books getting preachy, and it’s amusing to read through.
I really enjoyed reading this article and haven’t really thought about how relevant these books really are today. I do really appreciate as well the level of detail that went into the morphs and how the kids often had to struggle to control a morphs muscle memory, or holy hell the termites/ants.
It’s all about David’s arc for me. That’s THE turning point for the gang, imo. Remembering Jake telling Ax to get Rachel when he thinks Tobias has been killed…gives me chills every single time. Get Rachel. What a moment. I’m doing a reread right now, and every time I think I’m not so interested in the next book because it’s from the POV of this character or that character it slams me all over again with feelings. Even in the fluffier filler books there are so many intense moments.
That was a really wonderful read, thank you. I read some of the Animorphs books as a kid, but I grew up in Switzerland, and they only translated them until Book 30. For no reason.
At one point I was frustrated and wanted to know how the story ends so I ordered the “last book” and was thoroughly disappointed at the ending. Which was not the ending at all, but it took me re-discovering them as a teen to figure it out. I found pdfs online, blazed through them all and was in love forever.
It’s a shame, because nobody I know has read the whole story and only a few people know about the series at all.
I know others have disagreed with your strikethroughs, and I’d like to contribute.
The Ellimist Chronicles. (some spoilers ahead)
I understand it adds virtually nothing to the Animorphs’ story, but it sets the whole series in front of this epic cosmic background. It also shows that the Ellimist was just a teen who liked video games that gets caught up in an alien invasion, just like our protagonists.
That book really made me fall in love with sci-fi that’s more than just laser guns and spaceships, but tries to expand the entire cosmos.
… I’m not good with words, but I hope you got the gist.
Also you praised the humor, but crossed out The Unknown.
I don’t know, Yeerks infesting horses to try to enter Area 51, just for the secret to be an Andalite toilet was hilarious.
I loved Animorphs! Tobias was always my favorite. Did he want to fuck other hawks? I don’t remember that part, but I do remember Jake finding him eating road kill.
I was 11 when the series started to come out, so one book either cost a week’s allowance or I’d have to ask Mom to buy it for me. She usually agreed, my parents had no problem buying me paperback books. Reading was good for me, after all. If they weren’t on Wal-Mart’s rack, I had to wait for the monthly trip to the mall, which had a book store.
I remember the books being gory; I definitely remember the Animorphs capturing a Controller and holding them captive, watching the Yeerk starve to death.
My parents never read any of the books, so I don’t know if they would’ve disapproved. I kind of don’t think so. Mom read the beginning of the first book of another series, “The Dragonriders of Pern”, which involved violent conquest, forced marriage, and murder narrated by a guy with suicidal depression whom the protagonist is surprised hasn’t offed himself already. Her response: “Do you understand what they’re talking about?” 10-year old me: “yes” Mom: “okaaay” and then it was never brought up again as I bought all that series too.