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Animorphs #1
The Invasion
Sometimes weird things happen to people. Ask Jake. He may tell you about the night he and his friends saw the strange light in the sky. He may even tell you about what happened when they realized the "light" was only a plane -- from another planet. Here's where Jake's story gets a little weird. It's where they're told that the human race is under attack -- and given the chance to fight back.
Now Jake, Rachel, Cassie, Tobias, and Marco have the power to morph into any animal they choose. And they must use that power to outsmart an evil that is greater than anything the world has ever seen...
Now Jake, Rachel, Cassie, Tobias, and Marco have the power to morph into any animal they choose. And they must use that power to outsmart an evil that is greater than anything the world has ever seen...
184 pages, Paperback
First published June 1, 1996
721 people are currently reading
7848 people want to read
About the author
K.A. Applegate
251 books486 followersalso published under the name Katherine Applegate
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Displaying 1 - 30 of 1,788 reviews
August 2, 2024
O ludzie, ta historia tak bardzo nie miała sensu 😂😂😂
ALE JAKI TO BYŁ FUN
ALE JAKI TO BYŁ FUN
July 3, 2007
Rather than go through the 23482398 of these that I read as a wee one, we'll commemorate the one that got it all started. If you're my age, a boy, and at least a little bit of a dork, you read these books. They had everything I wanted at that point: quick, dramatic chapters printed in this super-cool space age font, badass fucking aliens (you got your giant centipede things, your huge warriors with bodies made of blades, weird blue centaur-things with stalk eyes and scorpion tails, and nasty-ass slugs that crawl into your ear and control your brain), a core of main characters that had token, unfailing identities, and some great romantic tension between them.
Some might argue that the concept- a gaggle of 13ish year olds stumble upon a dying alien who grants them the power to morph into any animal so that they can fight the impending invasion of a species of brain-infesting slugs, accept this offer, actually avoid death in the first 5 minutes while still doing their homework- is a stretch. So is the Bible, dudes. Unlike Jesus and Co., however, the Animorphs actually interested me. I used to spend time playing around outside and somehow pretending I was part of the Animorphs (how do you adequately pretend you're morphing? Especially when you're like, 12 years old?), and I even did a couple book reports on them, despite the chagrin of my teachers. Shit, I actually tried to watch the Nickelodeon TV show- but that sucked even then.
If nothing else, you could always count on the Animorphs to be steadfast and true to character. You knew with every book that at some point they were going to be in a situation that seemed hopeless; Jake (the 'leader') would say something strong and inspirational; Marco (the smartass) would crack a joke to lighten the mood; Cassie (the giant pussy) would come up with some sort of emotional, spiritual bullshit; Rachel (the violent femme, so to speak); Tobias (the neglected, dweeby, generally-pitied kid who managed to get trapped in the form of a hawk in like, the second book) would just kind of grit his teeth and bear it; and of course Ax, the alien of the group who lacked any human personality, would comment on the time.
I don't know why I eventually stopped reading these books, but I never got to the conclusion and by the time I went back to find out, the Animorphs were nowhere to be found. I guess it's destiny. Someday I will find the final book, and a giant void will be filled.
In conclusion- A Few Subtle Ways To See if Someone is Cool:
A) Mention "Visser 3." Gauge the reaction.
B) Tell them you'd love to hang out, but you've got a meeting with The Sharing later. This should concern them.
C) Anytime something strange happens, attribute it to that dastardly Ellimist.
D) Each year, coordinate a Day of Mourning for the Gedds.
But most of all, anyone who read this gargantuan babbling of mine is awesome. In a kinda pathetic way.
Some might argue that the concept- a gaggle of 13ish year olds stumble upon a dying alien who grants them the power to morph into any animal so that they can fight the impending invasion of a species of brain-infesting slugs, accept this offer, actually avoid death in the first 5 minutes while still doing their homework- is a stretch. So is the Bible, dudes. Unlike Jesus and Co., however, the Animorphs actually interested me. I used to spend time playing around outside and somehow pretending I was part of the Animorphs (how do you adequately pretend you're morphing? Especially when you're like, 12 years old?), and I even did a couple book reports on them, despite the chagrin of my teachers. Shit, I actually tried to watch the Nickelodeon TV show- but that sucked even then.
If nothing else, you could always count on the Animorphs to be steadfast and true to character. You knew with every book that at some point they were going to be in a situation that seemed hopeless; Jake (the 'leader') would say something strong and inspirational; Marco (the smartass) would crack a joke to lighten the mood; Cassie (the giant pussy) would come up with some sort of emotional, spiritual bullshit; Rachel (the violent femme, so to speak); Tobias (the neglected, dweeby, generally-pitied kid who managed to get trapped in the form of a hawk in like, the second book) would just kind of grit his teeth and bear it; and of course Ax, the alien of the group who lacked any human personality, would comment on the time.
I don't know why I eventually stopped reading these books, but I never got to the conclusion and by the time I went back to find out, the Animorphs were nowhere to be found. I guess it's destiny. Someday I will find the final book, and a giant void will be filled.
In conclusion- A Few Subtle Ways To See if Someone is Cool:
A) Mention "Visser 3." Gauge the reaction.
B) Tell them you'd love to hang out, but you've got a meeting with The Sharing later. This should concern them.
C) Anytime something strange happens, attribute it to that dastardly Ellimist.
D) Each year, coordinate a Day of Mourning for the Gedds.
But most of all, anyone who read this gargantuan babbling of mine is awesome. In a kinda pathetic way.
January 21, 2021
I don't know what to tell y'all, this book still whips ass
October 18, 2022
Don't let the rating fool you; reading this book initiated the most significant literary experience of my life. It started in grade school and ended much too soon in high school. I read all of the books in the Animorphs universe, and after years of dragging my mom to the book store to buy me the latest Animorphs release, I finished the last book with a feeling of gratification, nostalgia, and love.
It seems silly and frankly impossible to describe to what extent this series has touched me. It's not been just an influence in my life--it is a part of my life. I can only start off by saying that I blame Animorphs for my interest sci-fi, physics, biology, genetics, ethics, animals, war tactics, and basically almost every aspect of my intellectual and emotional life. The books opened up galaxies, physics, technology, alternate universes and other fantastic ideas to my impressionable young mind. It made me believe that things like speed-of-light travel and paradigm-shifting catastrophies were possible, even if they don't exist (yet).
I also can't think of better characters with whom I could interact monthly. Each Animorph, and each protagonist and antagonist that they encounter, all had motives and desires and ambitions that made them so likable even when you hated them. K.A. Applegate was able to humanize the least human of aliens, from the all-powerful and godlike Ellimist to the hunger-driven monstrosities called Taxxons. My heart broke even for the seemingly sinister assistant vice principal when I discovered his role in the series. While exposing the flaws of each being, human or not, friend or foe, Animorphs showed us how to care for them, to sympathize with them as fellow creatures on this grand stage called life. More than anything, the capacity to care and to understand is what I walked away with, and I thank Ms. Applegate forever for that.
K.A. Applegate, with her humor and intellect, constructed one of the most encompassing YA series to this day. I've yet to read anything of the emotional depth and sympathy of Animorphs. And I'm not just talking about sympathy for another person, but for mankind, for alien species, for the enemy--and most of all, for people who are different from us. What we don't know, we fear, and while sometimes this is justified, Animorphs taught me that a second and third and fourth look is always merited. This was the first series that taught me that the world is a canvas painted with shades of gray, that nothing is fair, and that the good guys may not always win. But the series also taught me about the power of sacrifice, duty, and love. They were hard but valuable lessons.
The series might be too young for adults to pick up. Undoubtedly my affection for this series plays some part in my re-reading the books every now and then. Each individual book has its strengths and weaknesses, and some are better than others. Some books are scary, others humorous, and a few heartbreaking. But with Animorphs, it's the series that packs a powerful punch. If I could rate a series, I would give Animorphs 100 Big Gold Stars.
It seems silly and frankly impossible to describe to what extent this series has touched me. It's not been just an influence in my life--it is a part of my life. I can only start off by saying that I blame Animorphs for my interest sci-fi, physics, biology, genetics, ethics, animals, war tactics, and basically almost every aspect of my intellectual and emotional life. The books opened up galaxies, physics, technology, alternate universes and other fantastic ideas to my impressionable young mind. It made me believe that things like speed-of-light travel and paradigm-shifting catastrophies were possible, even if they don't exist (yet).
I also can't think of better characters with whom I could interact monthly. Each Animorph, and each protagonist and antagonist that they encounter, all had motives and desires and ambitions that made them so likable even when you hated them. K.A. Applegate was able to humanize the least human of aliens, from the all-powerful and godlike Ellimist to the hunger-driven monstrosities called Taxxons. My heart broke even for the seemingly sinister assistant vice principal when I discovered his role in the series. While exposing the flaws of each being, human or not, friend or foe, Animorphs showed us how to care for them, to sympathize with them as fellow creatures on this grand stage called life. More than anything, the capacity to care and to understand is what I walked away with, and I thank Ms. Applegate forever for that.
K.A. Applegate, with her humor and intellect, constructed one of the most encompassing YA series to this day. I've yet to read anything of the emotional depth and sympathy of Animorphs. And I'm not just talking about sympathy for another person, but for mankind, for alien species, for the enemy--and most of all, for people who are different from us. What we don't know, we fear, and while sometimes this is justified, Animorphs taught me that a second and third and fourth look is always merited. This was the first series that taught me that the world is a canvas painted with shades of gray, that nothing is fair, and that the good guys may not always win. But the series also taught me about the power of sacrifice, duty, and love. They were hard but valuable lessons.
The series might be too young for adults to pick up. Undoubtedly my affection for this series plays some part in my re-reading the books every now and then. Each individual book has its strengths and weaknesses, and some are better than others. Some books are scary, others humorous, and a few heartbreaking. But with Animorphs, it's the series that packs a powerful punch. If I could rate a series, I would give Animorphs 100 Big Gold Stars.
December 17, 2014
3.5 stars THIS BOOK IS SO EXCITING. Kids morphing into animals, flying saucers, and allllieeenns!
We're discussing the first 3 books on the blog 10/31. I can't believe I've never read these before.
We're discussing the first 3 books on the blog 10/31. I can't believe I've never read these before.
April 6, 2025
(Read in March 2015, January 2020, and April 2025.)
FIRST REVIEW / MAR 4, 2015
I’m embarking on my Epic Animorphs Reread 2015, so my read count is going to end up vastly skewed this year, but I’ll probably just increase my reading goal once it becomes an issue.
I can’t even count the number of times I’ve started rereading this series, but this time – this time!! – I’m probably going to manage, purely because I have them all on an e-reader now, which makes things a lot easier than carting around my battered, ripped, well-loved mass market paperbacks, which are all in storage on a different continent.
Necessary disclaimers: K.A. Applegate was formative reading for me, probably even stronger than Harry Potter was. I was a member of the Animorphs fan club, with ~secret letters~ from the kids; I had a calendar and a poster of the aliens, a holographic sign; I played the shitty online web game and printed out instructions for my friends on how to access it; I played the computer game demo despite the fact that the family desktop could barely handle it, but it still seemed like the COOLEST THING EVER; I made fanpages in Angelfire and laboriously hand-coded navigation grids of character photos, finding individual pixel coordinates in MS Paint; I would run home to catch the unbelievably terrible TV show whenever it happened to be on Norwegian TV (IT’S ALL IN YOUR HAAAAAANDS); I bought the first couple episodes on VHS; my best friend and I were convinced Yeerks had infiltrated the teachers at our school; I joined websites and chatrooms and it was probably my first-ever fandom. I’m convinced my own site must have looked better, but most of my dial-up days were spent browsing pages like this.
Needless to say, I was deep, y’all. So I am not going to be an objective reviewer at all. But that said, I have reread the first dozen books a few times since getting older, and I still find them emotionally affecting. The writing style itself is sparse and simplistic – this is middle-grade, what can you expect – but the content is surprisingly dark and gutting at times, even this early on: the crushing defeats and losses they experience from the get-go, the horror of Elfangor’s death (he is fucking EATEN ALIVE).
So again, while the writing style is simple, the content is sophisticated, and will only get moreso as the series continues. And even so, they’re such kids at the start, they’re so small and young and new to this – and they’ll spend the next 3+ years of their lives, their entire formative adolescence, fighting a war. They’ll become hardened warriors, making tough calls, experiencing betrayal and loss. In The Invasion, it’s all so new. (KAA hadn’t even sorted out her worldbuilding details yet either; keen readers can pick out inconsistency between the rules of morphing between here and the second book. It’s like the pilot of a show!)
I have a lot of Animorphs feelings. I’m nostalgic and sentimental about it, yes – a first-time reader wouldn’t be near tears like I was, knowing what’s eventually coming – but I think it is still very, very good. All middle grade readers should read Animorphs, IMO (and, honestly, young adult and adult readers too). Nobility, sacrifice, heroism, camaraderie, family, and love – fighting for what’s right, and good, no matter how hard it is, no matter how easy it would be to turn aside and do nothing and go on with your life. And at the same time, remembering to have a damn good time with your friends, still finding the time to stay light and supportive and crack jokes, because otherwise the horror of it will consume you.
I’m really looking forward to mainlining the rest of these books. I love the characters all so much, each and every single one of them. My later reviews will be much shorter; this rambly horrorfest of thoughts was just setting the stage for the series as a whole.
EDITED TO ADD: Series reread complete, between March 3rd and November 27th, 2015! Because it would be messy and ugly to put all 62 links in here, and I like things looking pretty, here’s my Animorphs master post for anyone wanting to read my reviews across the entire series. In conclusion, it’s amazing and heartbreaking and definitely worth revisiting as an adult; it’s even better than I remembered, and more sophisticated than even a lot of YA I’m reading today.
---------------------------------
SECOND REVIEW / JAN 1, 2020
5 years after my last full-series Animorphs reread, we’re back again! This time, we’re dragging a bunch of friends with us, including a few fresh readers, so I’m very excited. imo this series is still amazing and stands up for adult readers, because the content is so much darker than you perhaps expect or remember (or ever knew, if you hadn’t given Animorphs a shot in the 90s/00s).
This time, with a better memory of where it all goes, I found myself paying closer attention to the characterisations and the foreshadowing. Applegate (and her uncredited husband, Michael Grant) do such a good job of introducing each character, and immediately ratcheting up the stakes. I find myself thinking about this quote from the book particularly:
It’s the very first book, it’s the start of what’s going to become a years-long war for these poor kids, and you already see the repercussions: it’s not a fun whimsical adventure of animal morphing, it’s already a horrifying weight and responsibility settling on their shoulders; particularly Jake’s, as their leader.
I’m going to start compiling my favourite quotes from the whole series in a google doc as I go; because by the time we reach the end of the series I had pages upon pages of excerpts and they literally could not fit in my Goodreads reviews anymore, soooo I’m embarking on some preemptive cleanup!
Also, I’m upping this from 4 stars to 5 stars because upon revisiting it yet again, it really is such a good, strong start.
---------------------------------
THIRD REVIEW / APR 1, 2025
Every five years like clockwork, I feel the urge to reread Animorphs, so this was perfectly timed with some people I know doing another big group read (both with newbies and some old fans rereading).
I truly and sincerely love this book so much; it’s such a banger, and more than that, it’s extremely well-crafted as a series opener. Because even with being so short, I can’t believe how well it covers:
• shit immediately getting EXTREMELY REAL and gruesome and horrific and heartwrenching
• all of the kids’ very distinct personalities and backgrounds and relationships with each other
• Jake’s very offhand and normal and quietly funny narration (“My parents promised to ground me until I’m twenty if we ever went into the abandoned construction site. …..So anyway, we cut through the construction site,”)
• alien worldbuilding & how the morphing works
• establishing extremely personal stakes (Tom) and a major antagonist (Visser Three) and minor antagonist (Chapman)
• introducing their first battle morphs, and The Gardens as a source of morphs
• the horrific setting of the Yeerk pool, their devastating failure of a first mission
• the Tobias of it all
It’s also so ballsy having the Animorphs’ first mission be a crushing defeat like this. What a note to start their war on; it immediately makes the stakes clear to the reader that this is not going to be easy, and they’re not all fun frothy adventures. Because while the books do contain some fun and silliness along the way: hey, kids, don’t forget that this is a war.
FIRST REVIEW / MAR 4, 2015
I’m embarking on my Epic Animorphs Reread 2015, so my read count is going to end up vastly skewed this year, but I’ll probably just increase my reading goal once it becomes an issue.
I can’t even count the number of times I’ve started rereading this series, but this time – this time!! – I’m probably going to manage, purely because I have them all on an e-reader now, which makes things a lot easier than carting around my battered, ripped, well-loved mass market paperbacks, which are all in storage on a different continent.
Necessary disclaimers: K.A. Applegate was formative reading for me, probably even stronger than Harry Potter was. I was a member of the Animorphs fan club, with ~secret letters~ from the kids; I had a calendar and a poster of the aliens, a holographic sign; I played the shitty online web game and printed out instructions for my friends on how to access it; I played the computer game demo despite the fact that the family desktop could barely handle it, but it still seemed like the COOLEST THING EVER; I made fanpages in Angelfire and laboriously hand-coded navigation grids of character photos, finding individual pixel coordinates in MS Paint; I would run home to catch the unbelievably terrible TV show whenever it happened to be on Norwegian TV (IT’S ALL IN YOUR HAAAAAANDS); I bought the first couple episodes on VHS; my best friend and I were convinced Yeerks had infiltrated the teachers at our school; I joined websites and chatrooms and it was probably my first-ever fandom. I’m convinced my own site must have looked better, but most of my dial-up days were spent browsing pages like this.
Needless to say, I was deep, y’all. So I am not going to be an objective reviewer at all. But that said, I have reread the first dozen books a few times since getting older, and I still find them emotionally affecting. The writing style itself is sparse and simplistic – this is middle-grade, what can you expect – but the content is surprisingly dark and gutting at times, even this early on: the crushing defeats and losses they experience from the get-go, the horror of Elfangor’s death (he is fucking EATEN ALIVE).
At the very end, he cried out. His cry of despair was in our heads. His cry will always be in our heads.
So again, while the writing style is simple, the content is sophisticated, and will only get moreso as the series continues. And even so, they’re such kids at the start, they’re so small and young and new to this – and they’ll spend the next 3+ years of their lives, their entire formative adolescence, fighting a war. They’ll become hardened warriors, making tough calls, experiencing betrayal and loss. In The Invasion, it’s all so new. (KAA hadn’t even sorted out her worldbuilding details yet either; keen readers can pick out inconsistency between the rules of morphing between here and the second book. It’s like the pilot of a show!)
I have a lot of Animorphs feelings. I’m nostalgic and sentimental about it, yes – a first-time reader wouldn’t be near tears like I was, knowing what’s eventually coming – but I think it is still very, very good. All middle grade readers should read Animorphs, IMO (and, honestly, young adult and adult readers too). Nobility, sacrifice, heroism, camaraderie, family, and love – fighting for what’s right, and good, no matter how hard it is, no matter how easy it would be to turn aside and do nothing and go on with your life. And at the same time, remembering to have a damn good time with your friends, still finding the time to stay light and supportive and crack jokes, because otherwise the horror of it will consume you.
I’m really looking forward to mainlining the rest of these books. I love the characters all so much, each and every single one of them. My later reviews will be much shorter; this rambly horrorfest of thoughts was just setting the stage for the series as a whole.
EDITED TO ADD: Series reread complete, between March 3rd and November 27th, 2015! Because it would be messy and ugly to put all 62 links in here, and I like things looking pretty, here’s my Animorphs master post for anyone wanting to read my reviews across the entire series. In conclusion, it’s amazing and heartbreaking and definitely worth revisiting as an adult; it’s even better than I remembered, and more sophisticated than even a lot of YA I’m reading today.
---------------------------------
SECOND REVIEW / JAN 1, 2020
5 years after my last full-series Animorphs reread, we’re back again! This time, we’re dragging a bunch of friends with us, including a few fresh readers, so I’m very excited. imo this series is still amazing and stands up for adult readers, because the content is so much darker than you perhaps expect or remember (or ever knew, if you hadn’t given Animorphs a shot in the 90s/00s).
This time, with a better memory of where it all goes, I found myself paying closer attention to the characterisations and the foreshadowing. Applegate (and her uncredited husband, Michael Grant) do such a good job of introducing each character, and immediately ratcheting up the stakes. I find myself thinking about this quote from the book particularly:
I nodded slowly. It felt like I was agreeing to something awful. Like I was volunteering for a trip to the dentist or something much worse. It felt like a million pounds of weight had just landed on my shoulders.
I knew what I had to do next.
It’s the very first book, it’s the start of what’s going to become a years-long war for these poor kids, and you already see the repercussions: it’s not a fun whimsical adventure of animal morphing, it’s already a horrifying weight and responsibility settling on their shoulders; particularly Jake’s, as their leader.
I’m going to start compiling my favourite quotes from the whole series in a google doc as I go; because by the time we reach the end of the series I had pages upon pages of excerpts and they literally could not fit in my Goodreads reviews anymore, soooo I’m embarking on some preemptive cleanup!
Also, I’m upping this from 4 stars to 5 stars because upon revisiting it yet again, it really is such a good, strong start.
---------------------------------
THIRD REVIEW / APR 1, 2025
Every five years like clockwork, I feel the urge to reread Animorphs, so this was perfectly timed with some people I know doing another big group read (both with newbies and some old fans rereading).
I truly and sincerely love this book so much; it’s such a banger, and more than that, it’s extremely well-crafted as a series opener. Because even with being so short, I can’t believe how well it covers:
• shit immediately getting EXTREMELY REAL and gruesome and horrific and heartwrenching
• all of the kids’ very distinct personalities and backgrounds and relationships with each other
• Jake’s very offhand and normal and quietly funny narration (“My parents promised to ground me until I’m twenty if we ever went into the abandoned construction site. …..So anyway, we cut through the construction site,”)
• alien worldbuilding & how the morphing works
• establishing extremely personal stakes (Tom) and a major antagonist (Visser Three) and minor antagonist (Chapman)
• introducing their first battle morphs, and The Gardens as a source of morphs
• the horrific setting of the Yeerk pool, their devastating failure of a first mission
• the Tobias of it all
It’s also so ballsy having the Animorphs’ first mission be a crushing defeat like this. What a note to start their war on; it immediately makes the stakes clear to the reader that this is not going to be easy, and they’re not all fun frothy adventures. Because while the books do contain some fun and silliness along the way: hey, kids, don’t forget that this is a war.
July 29, 2021
Not to brag or anything but the summer after 3rd grade my mom signed me up for a kids' book club at the local library and one of our duties was to screen new intake for what was hip and worth investing in. We got to sample Animorphs numbers 1 and 2 shortly after publication and they asked us: are these cool enough to buy more of?
Answer: heck yeah.
A couple decades later and they're still flying off the shelves of YA collections hither and yon. With good reason!
Now, I can't take full credit for introducing this stellar series to the greater Chicagoland suburbs... It was a book CLUB, after all. But if you were an AHML patron circa 1996, well, you're welcome.
5 stars. Young adult heart, mature adult spirit. Just a killer series.
Answer: heck yeah.
A couple decades later and they're still flying off the shelves of YA collections hither and yon. With good reason!
Now, I can't take full credit for introducing this stellar series to the greater Chicagoland suburbs... It was a book CLUB, after all. But if you were an AHML patron circa 1996, well, you're welcome.
5 stars. Young adult heart, mature adult spirit. Just a killer series.
February 1, 2016
So one of the things I did in middle school instead of being cool was read this series, over and over and over again. It's pretty much the reason I love reading science fiction; it was all up in my head and re-wiring my brain during my formative years. Over Christmas, my mom finally succeeded in getting me to brave her garage and pull out boxes of my old books that she's been storing for years, and what did I find in two of them but this series. They hadn't been touched for at least thirteen years. I don't even remember the last time I read this first book.
I've sort of been hankering to re-read this series for a while now, but actually having the full series in my hands pushed me to actually do it. Coincidentally, in August it will have been twenty years since this book was published, and I'm going to celebrate by re-reading one book a month (sometimes two, when the specials pop up in the chronology) until I've done the whole thing, just like I read it as the series was first published. It's going to take me about four years. It's hilarious to me now to think that waiting that month in between books was so agonizing for me back then, when it's standard now to wait years in between new books for series I read.
For those of you who didn't spend the precious hours of your youth reading serialized monthly novels about children turning into animals in order to fight parasitic body-stealing aliens, let me give you a quick primer.
One sleepy summer evening, five kids are walking home from the mall through an abandoned construction site when an alien crashes his spaceship in front of them. The alien is dying. He explains to the children that their planet has already been invaded secretly by another race of aliens called the Yeerks, parasites who travel from world to world taking over species. They've been on Earth for years slowly gaining traction, human body by human body. On impulse, the alien gifts the children a piece of his alien technology in hopes that they will use it to fight off the secret invasion until his people can arrive and provide reinforcements. He gives them the power to morph: the ability to absorb DNA from another individual, and change your form to match it. Before they can even begin to absorb all the information they've been given, the Yeerks and their allies arrive, and murder the kindly alien.
And so begins the Animorphs, which is what they decide to call themselves: Jake, the natural leader, whose brother has been taken over by a Yeerk; Jake's cousin Rachel, a beautiful and fashion-conscious blonde with a hidden streak of anger and violence; Cassie, the kind and gentle animal lover, who is always the voice of reason and compassion; Marco, who lost his mother two years before, and hides his feelings behind smart-ass remarks and pop culture references; and Tobias, who was raised by his absentee aunt and uncle, and who more than any of them embraces their new powers.
This book is all set-up, and it does a pretty good job. We learn the basic details of the conflict with the Yeerks. We learn the terminology (Yeerk pools, kandrona rays, Andalites, morphing, Bug Fighters, Dracon beams, Taxxons, Hork-Bajir) and the way things work in this universe (the two hour time limit on morphing, Yeerks needing to leave their host bodies to feed, the limitations of thought-speak while morphing). And we learn that despite being a supposed children's book series, this will be a story that not only has consequences, but will be unafraid to tackle the realities of war on the human psyche. (Of course I didn't realize all that when I was first reading it, but I can't help seeing all the seeds, knowing what's to come.)
That's not to say things weren't wonkier than I remembered. Some of the plot developments, character, and dialogue were a little bit creaky. And while for the most part all the little details I noticed that set up things to be revealed (the crashed Andalite ship, Tobias' longer encounter with the alien) were consistent with later books, there was also the occasional blip, like here in the first book it appears that even while not in a morph, the kids can direct their thoughts to another person in a morph, where later in the series, it's well-established that you can only use thought-speak while in a morph. Anyway, I'm hopeful that as we get deeper in, the bumps will even out, and it will be the self-assured series that I remember so fondly.
I was super tempted to just read the next one right away, but I'm going to hold myself back and keep to my schedule. Even though tomorrow *is* February 1st, so technically I wouldn't be cheating . . .
I've sort of been hankering to re-read this series for a while now, but actually having the full series in my hands pushed me to actually do it. Coincidentally, in August it will have been twenty years since this book was published, and I'm going to celebrate by re-reading one book a month (sometimes two, when the specials pop up in the chronology) until I've done the whole thing, just like I read it as the series was first published. It's going to take me about four years. It's hilarious to me now to think that waiting that month in between books was so agonizing for me back then, when it's standard now to wait years in between new books for series I read.
For those of you who didn't spend the precious hours of your youth reading serialized monthly novels about children turning into animals in order to fight parasitic body-stealing aliens, let me give you a quick primer.
One sleepy summer evening, five kids are walking home from the mall through an abandoned construction site when an alien crashes his spaceship in front of them. The alien is dying. He explains to the children that their planet has already been invaded secretly by another race of aliens called the Yeerks, parasites who travel from world to world taking over species. They've been on Earth for years slowly gaining traction, human body by human body. On impulse, the alien gifts the children a piece of his alien technology in hopes that they will use it to fight off the secret invasion until his people can arrive and provide reinforcements. He gives them the power to morph: the ability to absorb DNA from another individual, and change your form to match it. Before they can even begin to absorb all the information they've been given, the Yeerks and their allies arrive, and murder the kindly alien.
And so begins the Animorphs, which is what they decide to call themselves: Jake, the natural leader, whose brother has been taken over by a Yeerk; Jake's cousin Rachel, a beautiful and fashion-conscious blonde with a hidden streak of anger and violence; Cassie, the kind and gentle animal lover, who is always the voice of reason and compassion; Marco, who lost his mother two years before, and hides his feelings behind smart-ass remarks and pop culture references; and Tobias, who was raised by his absentee aunt and uncle, and who more than any of them embraces their new powers.
This book is all set-up, and it does a pretty good job. We learn the basic details of the conflict with the Yeerks. We learn the terminology (Yeerk pools, kandrona rays, Andalites, morphing, Bug Fighters, Dracon beams, Taxxons, Hork-Bajir) and the way things work in this universe (the two hour time limit on morphing, Yeerks needing to leave their host bodies to feed, the limitations of thought-speak while morphing). And we learn that despite being a supposed children's book series, this will be a story that not only has consequences, but will be unafraid to tackle the realities of war on the human psyche. (Of course I didn't realize all that when I was first reading it, but I can't help seeing all the seeds, knowing what's to come.)
That's not to say things weren't wonkier than I remembered. Some of the plot developments, character, and dialogue were a little bit creaky. And while for the most part all the little details I noticed that set up things to be revealed (the crashed Andalite ship, Tobias' longer encounter with the alien) were consistent with later books, there was also the occasional blip, like here in the first book it appears that even while not in a morph, the kids can direct their thoughts to another person in a morph, where later in the series, it's well-established that you can only use thought-speak while in a morph. Anyway, I'm hopeful that as we get deeper in, the bumps will even out, and it will be the self-assured series that I remember so fondly.
I was super tempted to just read the next one right away, but I'm going to hold myself back and keep to my schedule. Even though tomorrow *is* February 1st, so technically I wouldn't be cheating . . .
December 29, 2021
When I learned the first book in one of my favorite childhood series was being re-released as an audiobook, I had to have it, so I am super grateful to LibroFM for providing me with an ALC! This was honestly even better than I remembered it being and now I can't wait to reread the rest of the series, whether it's through the audiobooks or not. This series is just so delightful and has so many good memories for me, but I honestly could easily see it appealing to today's kids, too.
February 10, 2020
Story time:
When Animorphs was at its feverish height of popularity and what seemed like an entire Borders' kid's section was devoted to these weird mutating frog kids, I was a snobby eleven year old who was like, "These covers are so GAUCHE, truly not meant for a SOPHISTICATED reader of TASTE and CLASS, please point me to the DEAR AMERICA, which has classy features like ITALIC FONTS and a silk bookmarks. I pity the plebeian child who reads this dreck."
Twenty years later I am like, "Yum yum, dreck, I love to eat it," and am not as much of a literary snob. But if there's one thing I'm snobby about it's terfs and FUCK YOU, JK ROWLING! KA Applegate's Animorphs was recommended to me as an alternative to nostalgic 90's literature that wasn't written by a terf, and being the kind of snobby that history will prove right, I decided to give it a try.
So, how is Animorphs (as reviewed by a 31 year old woman in the year of Our Lord 2020)?
It's okay! I actually thought I would like it a lot less than I did. Here's a very unofficial review, based on a series of texts I sent my best friend who is also reading Animorphs for the first time:
"Also, oh my gosh.... the font in this book... I can't"
"I'm one chapter in and I've already decided Marco sucks."
"Just got through my first morph and I wonder how much of this book series is just gonna be wacky hijinks with kids trying to get their clothes on after a morph?"
"Rachel is my favorite so far. Why is KA Applegate so in love with Tobias? This whole book has a toBIAS."
"Almost done with the first book. I am here for Tobias' huge and obvious crush on both Jake and Rachel. Bisexual icon, tbh."
More formally, I thought the book was okay. I was actually impressed with some of the writing. The way that Applegate describes the morphs, when the characters are caught in an animal body fighting for supremacy of their thoughts over the instincts of the animal was quite vivid and detailed. The descriptions of the aliens races are precise enough that they're easy to picture. There's moments that she captures emotion quite well, especially terror.
The plot moves along at the speed of a bullet. It goes zero-to-one hundred real quick. Almost right away the characters in the book are fighting for their lives, being chased by aliens, descending into hell pits full or tortured humans enslaved to an alien race, watching their brothers get thrown off of cliffs, and getting permanently trapped in hawks' bodies. (SPOILER if you are a child and it's 1997). It made the book read quickly, but the stakes were so high I got compassion fatigue and had trouble mustering up emotion when everything was dramatic from the get-go.
The dialogue is bad. It's so bad. It's simplistic and forced and full of out-dated references ("We should tell someone we saw a UFO! Maybe we could get on Letterman.") I know I am not the intended audience for this book, but the dialogue gets Oooooooooooooooof stars rating.
I don't know if I'll keep reading (though I might thrust this book into the hands of a 9 year old boy). I feel like I get the gist of the series, but also there's like 54 books in the series and if I read one a week I could be finished in about a year and part of that seems very appealing to my completionist soul.
When Animorphs was at its feverish height of popularity and what seemed like an entire Borders' kid's section was devoted to these weird mutating frog kids, I was a snobby eleven year old who was like, "These covers are so GAUCHE, truly not meant for a SOPHISTICATED reader of TASTE and CLASS, please point me to the DEAR AMERICA, which has classy features like ITALIC FONTS and a silk bookmarks. I pity the plebeian child who reads this dreck."
Twenty years later I am like, "Yum yum, dreck, I love to eat it," and am not as much of a literary snob. But if there's one thing I'm snobby about it's terfs and FUCK YOU, JK ROWLING! KA Applegate's Animorphs was recommended to me as an alternative to nostalgic 90's literature that wasn't written by a terf, and being the kind of snobby that history will prove right, I decided to give it a try.
So, how is Animorphs (as reviewed by a 31 year old woman in the year of Our Lord 2020)?
It's okay! I actually thought I would like it a lot less than I did. Here's a very unofficial review, based on a series of texts I sent my best friend who is also reading Animorphs for the first time:
"Also, oh my gosh.... the font in this book... I can't"
"I'm one chapter in and I've already decided Marco sucks."
"Just got through my first morph and I wonder how much of this book series is just gonna be wacky hijinks with kids trying to get their clothes on after a morph?"
"Rachel is my favorite so far. Why is KA Applegate so in love with Tobias? This whole book has a toBIAS."
"Almost done with the first book. I am here for Tobias' huge and obvious crush on both Jake and Rachel. Bisexual icon, tbh."
More formally, I thought the book was okay. I was actually impressed with some of the writing. The way that Applegate describes the morphs, when the characters are caught in an animal body fighting for supremacy of their thoughts over the instincts of the animal was quite vivid and detailed. The descriptions of the aliens races are precise enough that they're easy to picture. There's moments that she captures emotion quite well, especially terror.
The plot moves along at the speed of a bullet. It goes zero-to-one hundred real quick. Almost right away the characters in the book are fighting for their lives, being chased by aliens, descending into hell pits full or tortured humans enslaved to an alien race, watching their brothers get thrown off of cliffs, and getting permanently trapped in hawks' bodies. (SPOILER if you are a child and it's 1997). It made the book read quickly, but the stakes were so high I got compassion fatigue and had trouble mustering up emotion when everything was dramatic from the get-go.
The dialogue is bad. It's so bad. It's simplistic and forced and full of out-dated references ("We should tell someone we saw a UFO! Maybe we could get on Letterman.") I know I am not the intended audience for this book, but the dialogue gets Oooooooooooooooof stars rating.
I don't know if I'll keep reading (though I might thrust this book into the hands of a 9 year old boy). I feel like I get the gist of the series, but also there's like 54 books in the series and if I read one a week I could be finished in about a year and part of that seems very appealing to my completionist soul.
June 26, 2016
If you lived through the late 90s at all, odds are you remember Animorphs. It was a best-selling middle grade/young adult book series,
a Nickelodeon TV show,
a videogame,
and a Transformers toy line.
I was a big fan of the show as a kid, I played the games, and had a big collection of the toys. (Yes, I still have them. Don't judge me.) However, I only read a couple of the books. I never began reading the series from the start. So, here I am! I'm finally starting at the beginning and reading on through. And I gotta say, so far I am not regretting this decision.
This book is awesome! No, it's not great literature, but it was such a blast to read. The fast pace never wavered, the action never stopped, and the plot never ceased being interesting. It's just a cool book and I can see why it was so popular back in the day. However, due to the multitude of 90s pop culture references and its fair share of cheese, it's a fairly dated series and will probably never make a good comeback. Still, if you like the 90s, you will LOVE this book! I definitely did.
Also, aside from the keyhole cover, there is the super awesome gimmicky page-flip animation thingy. When you flip the pages, there's an animation at the bottom right hand corner. That crap was the coolest thing ever in the 90s.
FINAL VERDICT: 5 out of five blue aliens
August 11, 2021
This book is a very good start to an epic series. As a series, I would say Animorphs is a bit of a mixed bag. These are all pretty much stand alone books bound together by an overarching story. Which means that, according to your personal preference, one book might disappoint while another might knock your socks off. There are some very good books in here, some mediocre ones and even a few disappointing ones.
The concept, the themes, the world building and the overarching story are amazing. Every main character can stand on his or her own, shown brilliantly by each book featuring only one of the main characters as the point of view and always switching to someone else in the next book. The way the characters are fleshed out and grow throughout the series is also one of the main strengths of the series. The books that are driven more by character rather than plot are also some of the best in the entire series in my opinion.
If you like the concept: give this book a try, it’s short and quite enjoyable. If you like this book, I’d wholeheartedly recommend this series, though I will say there are definitely a few volumes in here that are more than skippable.
The concept, the themes, the world building and the overarching story are amazing. Every main character can stand on his or her own, shown brilliantly by each book featuring only one of the main characters as the point of view and always switching to someone else in the next book. The way the characters are fleshed out and grow throughout the series is also one of the main strengths of the series. The books that are driven more by character rather than plot are also some of the best in the entire series in my opinion.
If you like the concept: give this book a try, it’s short and quite enjoyable. If you like this book, I’d wholeheartedly recommend this series, though I will say there are definitely a few volumes in here that are more than skippable.
August 6, 2014
Started reading Animorphs 'cause I wanted to see if it was stupid. Boy was I ever wrong. Kids are fighting against mind-stealing aliens in this incredibly spooky and realistic-sounding character-oriented saga. In the first book they figure out what the circumstances of the invasion are and are given their morphing powers. I read the entire series. It is probably a lot different from what you think. I read these for the first time when I was in my mid-twenties, so that should tell you something. . . .
Lots of people think Animorphs is stupid based on their (wrong) assumptions about the books or because they have seen the less-than-stellar television show. But the series is amazing. You can laugh, now shut up and get the first one. Basic premise: Five kids get the ability to morph into any animal they can touch (to acquire their DNA). A dying alien (an Andalite) gave them the power because there are other aliens, slug-like creatures called Yeerks, trying to take over the planet by squirming into people's ears and taking over their bodies. So it's a quiet invasion, people are being taken one by one and then made to act as though everything is cool . . . and of course, they become recruiters for getting more people to infest.
The Animorphs--Jake, Rachel, Cassie, Marco, and Tobias (and later, an Andalite kid named Aximili, Ax for short)--are all that stands between the rest of the world and total slavery; they're trying to hold off the Yeerks until the backup Andalite fleet gets there. They use their morphing technology to spy on the Yeerks and to destroy their facilities and whatnot.
But what makes these books so amazing is that these are kids, having to pretend they're normal kids so no one knows they're the "Andalite bandits," and they are fighting the enemy while living right out in the open, under their noses. Internal Andalite and Yeerk politics make the situations complicated, and through the fifty-four (and then some) book series it slowly escalates to an all-out war, with a child (Jake, leader of the Animorphs) as basically the president and general of the forces of Earth.
Thousands of humans and aliens die, sometimes in violent and horrible ways, and stunning moral crises present themselves all through the series. The Animorphs form alliances with other species and with each other; they have the beginnings of romantic relationships in some cases; they still have homework and family problems (in some cases, serious ones). These six kids put their personal problems aside as best they can and become warriors, completely losing their innocence and most of their humanity in the process. Though they're considered kids' books and the TV show was a bit goofy, I have no doubt that if marketing had been different and the thin serialized books had combined into fourteen or fifteen thicker books, it probably could have been accepted by adults. But since it's an intermediate series, you probably think I'm kidding around about how good these are. But I'm serious. Ms. Applegate's books are not without flaws (there are occasional continuity errors and little speed bumps), but they are highly recommended.
Here are some of the inconsistencies and notable aspects of the book:
Jake opens the book by claiming he can't reveal his name or identifying personal information because it would help the Yeerks find him and his friends and family. The problem is, they keep up this "we can't tell you who we are" schtick throughout the series until open war is declared late in the game, and despite that even from the beginning there are multiple details that could have easily identified them. This breaking-the-fourth-wall bit is poorly conceived, because it also reveals that the Animorphs are human, and that's a detail they try to keep secret from the Yeerks (and succeed at keeping for over half the series). Just finding any five kids with their names and descriptions at a school in a known area (near The Gardens) would be a pretty easy afternoon's work for a Controller with data processing experience, but since they give even more information (siblings' and parents' names, specific recognitions the kids have gotten, etc.), it would have been cake to track the kids down if these books were actually released into the same world they're trying to hide in.
Marco is shown to have always had the capacity to be a master strategist, an ability that comes out obviously much later in the series. Before they even become the Animorphs, Marco uses his strategy abilities to beat Jake in video games.
It is shown even in this first book that Cassie and Jake "like" each other. Cassie asks the boys to walk with them when they cut through the construction site; if she hadn't just wanted to have a chance to be near Jake, they might not have all been together to meet the alien. It is a bold step in a children's series to have interracial dating (Cassie is black, Jake is white); not many authors have tried to cover that sort of ground in children's literature, but in these books it totally is beside the point.
Jake only knows Tobias because he saved him from bullies once. Now Tobias sort of looks up to him, which is what got him involved in the first place. Little did he know he would pay his hero back by acting as a loyal soldier to Jake in the most bizarre war ever to hit Earth.
The Andalite, Elfangor, is said to have a three-dimensional picture of "his family" inside the ship, and there were two that were children. Since Elfangor was an adult when Ax was born, it's unlikely that one of the children was himself, so this is suggesting that Elfangor was the father in the picture and that he had a wife and two children. But in later books there were never any references to Elfangor taking an Andalite mate or having kids. This, like several other issues that crop up in this book, is probably just a result of the author not having worked out all the details yet when she wrote the first book.
The kids find out early on that morphing fixes injuries, so it's confusing how Elfangor, who had the morphing power, could have been mortally wounded and not morph to get rid of it. It's possible he was too exhausted, but he was in much better shape than the kids later were sometimes when they morphed to escape mortal injury, and he had enough time and energy to give instructions and information about the Yeerk invasion, so he probably should have been able to morph and fix his injury. He still would have had to deal with Visser Three, but the fight would have been very different. It is also possible he was tired of fighting and had made peace with his death, but that seems a bit unlikely . . . unless he was deliberately doing it to provide a distraction for the Animorphs' escape.
A lot is revealed to us through the communication between Elfangor and Visser Three, right before Elfangor is destroyed. In the conversation, it is revealed that the Hork-Bajir are slaves, conquered and stolen by the Yeerks, but that the Taxxons, the giant worms, are actually allies, voluntary hosts. Also, we learn that a "visser" is a rank in the Yeerk society, and that Visser Three aspires to be Visser One. And finally, we find out why the Yeerks want humans: Because they are easy to conquer and very numerous, yet are pleasant bodies to live in.
The fight between Visser Three and Elfangor (well, the scene in which the visser eats him) doesn't suggest that they have a very long history. They're clearly rivals, but it's a stale conversation that shows none of the very personal nature of this battle--information readers discover later in the series.
When the kids meet the Andalite, Tobias is the most drawn to him, and seems the most sympathetic to his situation. There's a reason for this, which is revealed much later in the series.
Jake is appointed the leader very early on, when the other kids are first looking to him to see if they would accept the power to morph. This puzzles him at first, but he is indeed the best leader, and later in the series he embraces his position.
This book contains an inconsistency. In this book in several instances, humans were able to project their thoughts, once to the Andalite and also Jake was able to send his thoughts to Tobias while Tobias was morphed but Jake was not. This is not how the thought-communication works in later books; normally they can only direct their thoughts while in a morphed form, and at that point they can direct thoughts to one person or many however they like. But no one can just hear them thinking when they are human (as Prince Elfangor does at the beginning of this book). Ms. Applegate was asked about it in an interview, and she replied that she could make up some kind of lame excuse if she wanted, but in all honesty she'd just made a mistake and hadn't worked that out fully before incorporating it. It's been said that this is fixed in the reprint.
Tobias is the first to morph. He turns into his pet cat. It is through that experience that they realize that morphing isn't at all painful, and that they also receive the instincts of the animals they morph into, since Tobias knows who he is while in cat morph but still somehow wants to chase strings and kill mice. Morphing also has the unfortunate side effect of making them turn up naked after they've shrunk out of their clothes, though later they do learn to morph skintight clothing as part of their human forms.
Tobias and Jake discover through their first morphing experiences that acquiring an animal's DNA puts the animal into a trance.
Another inconsistency was in this book: When Jake turned into his dog, it was more like he was an exact copy of Homer than the same dog from the same DNA. He seemed to have Homer's memories (e.g., he knew a bunch of information, through scent, about another male dog that Homer knew). Also, he was apparently neutered just like his dog, and in a later book the kids acquire DNA from steer and end up morphing into uncastrated bulls, which makes them quite a bit more violent. Apparently the physical details of an animal that are not genetic were still able to be copied at this stage of the game but not later. (This brings up a plethora of questions, such as how copying from DNA can possibly dictate how old they are when they morph, or things like hair growth or weight or distinctive markings acquired through life choices and whatnot.)
While in dog form, Jake can apparently smell something he relates to Visser Three when he gets the scent of his brother, Tom. This is because, unbeknownst to him at the time, Tom is a Controller. It seems odd that they don't use the dog's ability to smell Yeerks as a way to detect Controllers in later books.
Cassie is revealed to be the best morpher; she is the first to learn to morph clothing and can morph with both more speed and more control than the others.
When Tobias acquires a hawk morph from an injured hawk in Cassie's barn (a.k.a. the Wildlife Rehab Clinic), it is discovered that injuries to the acquired animal do not affect the DNA itself, so they can morph into an uninjured animal.
The "full members" of The Sharing (a.k.a., people infested with Yeerks) have one of their meetings on an open beach where anyone can just wander up. This lack of security is amazing considering the precautions they're forced to take in later books; it's funny to read this and see Controllers just talking about their plans out in the open.
Rachel is also revealed to kind of like Tobias, even this early on. She mentions that she cares about him, and occasionally says and does things to comfort him that she doesn't do for anyone else.
Lots of people think Animorphs is stupid based on their (wrong) assumptions about the books or because they have seen the less-than-stellar television show. But the series is amazing. You can laugh, now shut up and get the first one. Basic premise: Five kids get the ability to morph into any animal they can touch (to acquire their DNA). A dying alien (an Andalite) gave them the power because there are other aliens, slug-like creatures called Yeerks, trying to take over the planet by squirming into people's ears and taking over their bodies. So it's a quiet invasion, people are being taken one by one and then made to act as though everything is cool . . . and of course, they become recruiters for getting more people to infest.
The Animorphs--Jake, Rachel, Cassie, Marco, and Tobias (and later, an Andalite kid named Aximili, Ax for short)--are all that stands between the rest of the world and total slavery; they're trying to hold off the Yeerks until the backup Andalite fleet gets there. They use their morphing technology to spy on the Yeerks and to destroy their facilities and whatnot.
But what makes these books so amazing is that these are kids, having to pretend they're normal kids so no one knows they're the "Andalite bandits," and they are fighting the enemy while living right out in the open, under their noses. Internal Andalite and Yeerk politics make the situations complicated, and through the fifty-four (and then some) book series it slowly escalates to an all-out war, with a child (Jake, leader of the Animorphs) as basically the president and general of the forces of Earth.
Thousands of humans and aliens die, sometimes in violent and horrible ways, and stunning moral crises present themselves all through the series. The Animorphs form alliances with other species and with each other; they have the beginnings of romantic relationships in some cases; they still have homework and family problems (in some cases, serious ones). These six kids put their personal problems aside as best they can and become warriors, completely losing their innocence and most of their humanity in the process. Though they're considered kids' books and the TV show was a bit goofy, I have no doubt that if marketing had been different and the thin serialized books had combined into fourteen or fifteen thicker books, it probably could have been accepted by adults. But since it's an intermediate series, you probably think I'm kidding around about how good these are. But I'm serious. Ms. Applegate's books are not without flaws (there are occasional continuity errors and little speed bumps), but they are highly recommended.
Here are some of the inconsistencies and notable aspects of the book:
Jake opens the book by claiming he can't reveal his name or identifying personal information because it would help the Yeerks find him and his friends and family. The problem is, they keep up this "we can't tell you who we are" schtick throughout the series until open war is declared late in the game, and despite that even from the beginning there are multiple details that could have easily identified them. This breaking-the-fourth-wall bit is poorly conceived, because it also reveals that the Animorphs are human, and that's a detail they try to keep secret from the Yeerks (and succeed at keeping for over half the series). Just finding any five kids with their names and descriptions at a school in a known area (near The Gardens) would be a pretty easy afternoon's work for a Controller with data processing experience, but since they give even more information (siblings' and parents' names, specific recognitions the kids have gotten, etc.), it would have been cake to track the kids down if these books were actually released into the same world they're trying to hide in.
Marco is shown to have always had the capacity to be a master strategist, an ability that comes out obviously much later in the series. Before they even become the Animorphs, Marco uses his strategy abilities to beat Jake in video games.
It is shown even in this first book that Cassie and Jake "like" each other. Cassie asks the boys to walk with them when they cut through the construction site; if she hadn't just wanted to have a chance to be near Jake, they might not have all been together to meet the alien. It is a bold step in a children's series to have interracial dating (Cassie is black, Jake is white); not many authors have tried to cover that sort of ground in children's literature, but in these books it totally is beside the point.
Jake only knows Tobias because he saved him from bullies once. Now Tobias sort of looks up to him, which is what got him involved in the first place. Little did he know he would pay his hero back by acting as a loyal soldier to Jake in the most bizarre war ever to hit Earth.
The Andalite, Elfangor, is said to have a three-dimensional picture of "his family" inside the ship, and there were two that were children. Since Elfangor was an adult when Ax was born, it's unlikely that one of the children was himself, so this is suggesting that Elfangor was the father in the picture and that he had a wife and two children. But in later books there were never any references to Elfangor taking an Andalite mate or having kids. This, like several other issues that crop up in this book, is probably just a result of the author not having worked out all the details yet when she wrote the first book.
The kids find out early on that morphing fixes injuries, so it's confusing how Elfangor, who had the morphing power, could have been mortally wounded and not morph to get rid of it. It's possible he was too exhausted, but he was in much better shape than the kids later were sometimes when they morphed to escape mortal injury, and he had enough time and energy to give instructions and information about the Yeerk invasion, so he probably should have been able to morph and fix his injury. He still would have had to deal with Visser Three, but the fight would have been very different. It is also possible he was tired of fighting and had made peace with his death, but that seems a bit unlikely . . . unless he was deliberately doing it to provide a distraction for the Animorphs' escape.
A lot is revealed to us through the communication between Elfangor and Visser Three, right before Elfangor is destroyed. In the conversation, it is revealed that the Hork-Bajir are slaves, conquered and stolen by the Yeerks, but that the Taxxons, the giant worms, are actually allies, voluntary hosts. Also, we learn that a "visser" is a rank in the Yeerk society, and that Visser Three aspires to be Visser One. And finally, we find out why the Yeerks want humans: Because they are easy to conquer and very numerous, yet are pleasant bodies to live in.
The fight between Visser Three and Elfangor (well, the scene in which the visser eats him) doesn't suggest that they have a very long history. They're clearly rivals, but it's a stale conversation that shows none of the very personal nature of this battle--information readers discover later in the series.
When the kids meet the Andalite, Tobias is the most drawn to him, and seems the most sympathetic to his situation. There's a reason for this, which is revealed much later in the series.
Jake is appointed the leader very early on, when the other kids are first looking to him to see if they would accept the power to morph. This puzzles him at first, but he is indeed the best leader, and later in the series he embraces his position.
This book contains an inconsistency. In this book in several instances, humans were able to project their thoughts, once to the Andalite and also Jake was able to send his thoughts to Tobias while Tobias was morphed but Jake was not. This is not how the thought-communication works in later books; normally they can only direct their thoughts while in a morphed form, and at that point they can direct thoughts to one person or many however they like. But no one can just hear them thinking when they are human (as Prince Elfangor does at the beginning of this book). Ms. Applegate was asked about it in an interview, and she replied that she could make up some kind of lame excuse if she wanted, but in all honesty she'd just made a mistake and hadn't worked that out fully before incorporating it. It's been said that this is fixed in the reprint.
Tobias is the first to morph. He turns into his pet cat. It is through that experience that they realize that morphing isn't at all painful, and that they also receive the instincts of the animals they morph into, since Tobias knows who he is while in cat morph but still somehow wants to chase strings and kill mice. Morphing also has the unfortunate side effect of making them turn up naked after they've shrunk out of their clothes, though later they do learn to morph skintight clothing as part of their human forms.
Tobias and Jake discover through their first morphing experiences that acquiring an animal's DNA puts the animal into a trance.
Another inconsistency was in this book: When Jake turned into his dog, it was more like he was an exact copy of Homer than the same dog from the same DNA. He seemed to have Homer's memories (e.g., he knew a bunch of information, through scent, about another male dog that Homer knew). Also, he was apparently neutered just like his dog, and in a later book the kids acquire DNA from steer and end up morphing into uncastrated bulls, which makes them quite a bit more violent. Apparently the physical details of an animal that are not genetic were still able to be copied at this stage of the game but not later. (This brings up a plethora of questions, such as how copying from DNA can possibly dictate how old they are when they morph, or things like hair growth or weight or distinctive markings acquired through life choices and whatnot.)
While in dog form, Jake can apparently smell something he relates to Visser Three when he gets the scent of his brother, Tom. This is because, unbeknownst to him at the time, Tom is a Controller. It seems odd that they don't use the dog's ability to smell Yeerks as a way to detect Controllers in later books.
Cassie is revealed to be the best morpher; she is the first to learn to morph clothing and can morph with both more speed and more control than the others.
When Tobias acquires a hawk morph from an injured hawk in Cassie's barn (a.k.a. the Wildlife Rehab Clinic), it is discovered that injuries to the acquired animal do not affect the DNA itself, so they can morph into an uninjured animal.
The "full members" of The Sharing (a.k.a., people infested with Yeerks) have one of their meetings on an open beach where anyone can just wander up. This lack of security is amazing considering the precautions they're forced to take in later books; it's funny to read this and see Controllers just talking about their plans out in the open.
Rachel is also revealed to kind of like Tobias, even this early on. She mentions that she cares about him, and occasionally says and does things to comfort him that she doesn't do for anyone else.
October 26, 2025
4.25 stars ...
Excellent setup for the series. Fast-paced action, dialogue driven as this genre should be. Not a dull moment. Excited to see how the remaining 53 books play out. You heard me right ... 53 more to go! 👍😁👍
Excellent setup for the series. Fast-paced action, dialogue driven as this genre should be. Not a dull moment. Excited to see how the remaining 53 books play out. You heard me right ... 53 more to go! 👍😁👍
February 9, 2017
I re-read this the past weekend and now I can't stop thinking about it. I'm tearing through wikipedia remembering how awesome the whole thing was. I want to go back through the archives and read them all! There's only 64 books... this one only took me 90 minutes to read. I could burn through it in a few weekends...
< No Sam, no! That's the bookworm brain talking. You're an adult now, remember? >
Right, right. Sorry, lost myself there for a second. What was I doing? Right, working. It's just-- it would make such a great tv show if they remade it today! The nickelodeon version sucked, they rushed the plot and changed everything! And we have such better CGI now! If Starz or Hulu picked it up it could be really compelling!
< Sam! >
I just downloaded the entire series on epub.
< NOOOOOOO >
Sam read Animorphs books for longer than two hours. Now he can never go back
< No Sam, no! That's the bookworm brain talking. You're an adult now, remember? >
Right, right. Sorry, lost myself there for a second. What was I doing? Right, working. It's just-- it would make such a great tv show if they remade it today! The nickelodeon version sucked, they rushed the plot and changed everything! And we have such better CGI now! If Starz or Hulu picked it up it could be really compelling!
< Sam! >
I just downloaded the entire series on epub.
< NOOOOOOO >
Sam read Animorphs books for longer than two hours. Now he can never go back
March 26, 2015
ANIMORPHS!!!
That’s it. Review done. Go home.
What else do you want me to say? This was my series growing up. Sure, I read Hardy Boys and Nancy Drew—and someone was still writing new volumes in those series, too, updated for the modern 1990s. (I’m sure there is an entire PhD thesis devoted to tracing the ways those two series have been revised and rewritten and re-released throughout the twentieth century—and if there isn’t, there should be.) But it was probably an early indicator of my lifelong love for science fiction that I fell hard for Animorphs.
I depended on my school and public libraries to furnish me with copies of these books. For some reason, the first ten books were hard to find, so I didn’t read most of them until I was well into the series. After about #17, I just started buying them. With actual money. Or with paper Chapters gift certificates. Remember those? I remember getting multiple copies of #21 for a birthday—this was the first time I learned the dangers of asking for a specific book for a present—and the excitement of going to Chapters with gift receipts and exhanging the book for sweet sweet store credit.
I remember staying up late at night with the comfortable thickness of The Andalite Chronicles and The Ellimist Chronicles and enjoying the feel of the shiny cover as I turned page after page, long after my bedtime. (I was a rebel, in my own way.)
I guess what I’m saying is that I have a lot of good childhood nostalgia about Animorphs. Now, here I am, 25 years old—and I’m going to reread them all. I’ve considered it, off and on, for a while. Coincidentally, two separate things have galvanized me to do it now: Read it and Weep, one of my favourite podcasts, just did an episode on Animorphs; and Goodreads friend Julie has embarked on her own series re-read, and I like nothing more than copying people cooler than myself. Go read her reviews!
As far as The Invasion itself goes, it sets the stage for the rest of the series. The writing is shit, of course—and this is before the Scholastic interns take over. Applegate pretty much tells instead of shows at every opportunity. I have a little more faith in the ability of children to grasp subtext (I think they can understand it, even if they don’t have the critical framework to explain it to someone else). I suspect, however, that because these were Scholastic books, they were supposed to be easy to read.
And it would be a mistake to conclude that poor writing style means poor storytelling. Even in this first book, the signs of the heights this series would attain are there.
You’ve got the main enemy: the Yeerks, pure evil brain slugs who want to snatch our bodies. No one in authority seems to know this is going on. Only five kids who happen to be around when a dying alien crash-lands his ship learn the truth.
That truth is harsh. These kids are in middle school (so, I’m assuming Grade 7 or 8). They’re just beginning to brim over with hormones and body image issues. (We could get sidetracked for hours talking about how morphing is a metaphor for body image and confidence….) And suddenly a blue deer alien with a scythe on its tail gives these kids the power to morph into any animal—but only for two hours!—but, oh by the way, you’ll need this power to stop evil aliens, and their leader’s host body can also morph. This leader, Visser Three, promptly shows up and eats the injured Andalite, Prince Elfangor, while our five protagonists watch from their hiding spots in terror.
This is what I love about children’s literature. If you did this in a movie, the MPAA would be all up in your rating, and you’d get angry letters about nightmares. But Animorphs occasionally taps into some deep, Grimm fairytale levels of darkness.
The Invasion, of course, also introduces us to the five Animorphs themselves. Jake is the viewpoint protagonist for this first book. His voice is frustratingly average-pre-teen-boyish. Already, however, we start to get a sense of the diversity in the group—and I’m not just talking about the 1990s-style, one-of-every-major-ethnicity ensemble casting that pervaded our television shows. Even this early in the series, Applegate lays the ground for exploring issues in the Animorphs’ lives that have influenced them and set them on this path to being heroes. Jake has a complex relationship with his brother Tom (who happens to be a Controller!). Cassie has grown up caring for animals. Rachel has an absent father, a mother who isn’t always there, so she shoulders a lot of responsibility for her siblings. Marco tries to use humour to hide his insecurities. And Tobias—poor Tobias—is the kid neither aunt nor uncle wants, the kid who ends up being trapped as a red-tailed hawk and is probably better off for it.
They don’t always get along. There are plenty of debates and arguments about whether they should be fighting or, as the series progresses, how they should be fighting. This is not the unified team you see in Saturday morning cartoons; there are no cheeky winks at the audience as the Animorphs team up to trounce the incompetent henchmen yet another day. The Hork-Bajir are terrifying; the Taxxons are gross but still threatening. And we haven’t even seen Visser One yet!
As far as series openers go, The Invasion is pretty intense. It raises the stakes with every chapter, not just establishing the setting and main conflict but planting seeds for subplots and story arcs galore. This series ran for over 50 books. So no matter how poorly written the dialogue and descriptions are here, I can’t fault Applegate or her editors for their vision or ability to plan ahead.
Next review I get to talk about Rachel—who is, hands down, my favourite—and the wonderful way Animorphs handles gender roles.
My reviews of Animorphs:
#2: The Visitor →
That’s it. Review done. Go home.
What else do you want me to say? This was my series growing up. Sure, I read Hardy Boys and Nancy Drew—and someone was still writing new volumes in those series, too, updated for the modern 1990s. (I’m sure there is an entire PhD thesis devoted to tracing the ways those two series have been revised and rewritten and re-released throughout the twentieth century—and if there isn’t, there should be.) But it was probably an early indicator of my lifelong love for science fiction that I fell hard for Animorphs.
I depended on my school and public libraries to furnish me with copies of these books. For some reason, the first ten books were hard to find, so I didn’t read most of them until I was well into the series. After about #17, I just started buying them. With actual money. Or with paper Chapters gift certificates. Remember those? I remember getting multiple copies of #21 for a birthday—this was the first time I learned the dangers of asking for a specific book for a present—and the excitement of going to Chapters with gift receipts and exhanging the book for sweet sweet store credit.
I remember staying up late at night with the comfortable thickness of The Andalite Chronicles and The Ellimist Chronicles and enjoying the feel of the shiny cover as I turned page after page, long after my bedtime. (I was a rebel, in my own way.)
I guess what I’m saying is that I have a lot of good childhood nostalgia about Animorphs. Now, here I am, 25 years old—and I’m going to reread them all. I’ve considered it, off and on, for a while. Coincidentally, two separate things have galvanized me to do it now: Read it and Weep, one of my favourite podcasts, just did an episode on Animorphs; and Goodreads friend Julie has embarked on her own series re-read, and I like nothing more than copying people cooler than myself. Go read her reviews!
As far as The Invasion itself goes, it sets the stage for the rest of the series. The writing is shit, of course—and this is before the Scholastic interns take over. Applegate pretty much tells instead of shows at every opportunity. I have a little more faith in the ability of children to grasp subtext (I think they can understand it, even if they don’t have the critical framework to explain it to someone else). I suspect, however, that because these were Scholastic books, they were supposed to be easy to read.
And it would be a mistake to conclude that poor writing style means poor storytelling. Even in this first book, the signs of the heights this series would attain are there.
You’ve got the main enemy: the Yeerks, pure evil brain slugs who want to snatch our bodies. No one in authority seems to know this is going on. Only five kids who happen to be around when a dying alien crash-lands his ship learn the truth.
That truth is harsh. These kids are in middle school (so, I’m assuming Grade 7 or 8). They’re just beginning to brim over with hormones and body image issues. (We could get sidetracked for hours talking about how morphing is a metaphor for body image and confidence….) And suddenly a blue deer alien with a scythe on its tail gives these kids the power to morph into any animal—but only for two hours!—but, oh by the way, you’ll need this power to stop evil aliens, and their leader’s host body can also morph. This leader, Visser Three, promptly shows up and eats the injured Andalite, Prince Elfangor, while our five protagonists watch from their hiding spots in terror.
This is what I love about children’s literature. If you did this in a movie, the MPAA would be all up in your rating, and you’d get angry letters about nightmares. But Animorphs occasionally taps into some deep, Grimm fairytale levels of darkness.
The Invasion, of course, also introduces us to the five Animorphs themselves. Jake is the viewpoint protagonist for this first book. His voice is frustratingly average-pre-teen-boyish. Already, however, we start to get a sense of the diversity in the group—and I’m not just talking about the 1990s-style, one-of-every-major-ethnicity ensemble casting that pervaded our television shows. Even this early in the series, Applegate lays the ground for exploring issues in the Animorphs’ lives that have influenced them and set them on this path to being heroes. Jake has a complex relationship with his brother Tom (who happens to be a Controller!). Cassie has grown up caring for animals. Rachel has an absent father, a mother who isn’t always there, so she shoulders a lot of responsibility for her siblings. Marco tries to use humour to hide his insecurities. And Tobias—poor Tobias—is the kid neither aunt nor uncle wants, the kid who ends up being trapped as a red-tailed hawk and is probably better off for it.
They don’t always get along. There are plenty of debates and arguments about whether they should be fighting or, as the series progresses, how they should be fighting. This is not the unified team you see in Saturday morning cartoons; there are no cheeky winks at the audience as the Animorphs team up to trounce the incompetent henchmen yet another day. The Hork-Bajir are terrifying; the Taxxons are gross but still threatening. And we haven’t even seen Visser One yet!
As far as series openers go, The Invasion is pretty intense. It raises the stakes with every chapter, not just establishing the setting and main conflict but planting seeds for subplots and story arcs galore. This series ran for over 50 books. So no matter how poorly written the dialogue and descriptions are here, I can’t fault Applegate or her editors for their vision or ability to plan ahead.
Next review I get to talk about Rachel—who is, hands down, my favourite—and the wonderful way Animorphs handles gender roles.
My reviews of Animorphs:
#2: The Visitor →
January 4, 2020
2020 reread: I can't get over how much is packed into this book. What a ride, as it ever was.
----------
2016 reread: Reread this in an hour or so last night. God but I love these books. And we've only just cracked the world-building in this first book. It's very concise but still fantastic, the morph acquisition is plausible, and the characters are well-defined from the beginning. Still so good.
----------
2016 reread: Reread this in an hour or so last night. God but I love these books. And we've only just cracked the world-building in this first book. It's very concise but still fantastic, the morph acquisition is plausible, and the characters are well-defined from the beginning. Still so good.
January 22, 2022
Come check out my 4 hour 35 minute deep dive into reading every single Animorphs book for the first time on YouTube. I recap and review all of the books from the main series: https://youtu.be/H8kUM2q3CIU
November 28, 2025
Following the adage that gold can be found at the end of a rainbow, I walked through the World Wide Web in search of a story I could carry in my pocket. I had worked my way through gargantuanly large tomes of the classic variety & felt unjustly tricked; the majority of my encounters have left me feeling like the joke was on me, that the revered story was lost, too far away to be grasped by my dexterous fingers. It was at this point that I endeavoured to turn back the clock. Readers of my generation & veracity had sung to the Heavens a hymn of universal acclaim, fine-tuned with the melody of the angels’ chorus, a love most heartfelt for the Animorph series. I wanted to trust the common glee, the eager applause, & the popular story, once more.
I opened this book with trepidation. When these books were first published, I had not been among the crowd of young happy readers who consumed them. I had seen them in the library, & witnessed the eagerness of other readers as they fondled the covers, exchanging their joy with a friend, but for reasons I cannot necessarily express, this series existed on the periphery of my young life. Although I write to you now during a decade of life that far exceeds the target age range of the reader, I find myself leaning on my beliefs as they hold true now, as ever; a good book is a good book, no matter who it is written for.
Selecting this first book of the series, which accounts for 54 books in total, felt like an odd coin toss. I was eager, I do admit, to read the story that had captivated so many readers. I was also apprehensive about what I might find; worrying as I was that the joy would be wrapped in a gift that I was too old to appreciate.
This admission is tedious; one need only scroll through my reviews to note that I read nearly every style, genre, & type of story. I suppose that my feelings reflect a trepidation regarding the appreciation for something that holds so much nostalgia. It is an odd thing to describe but, it holds its place as all other feelings do & so, I have included it here.
As I worked through my eager insecurity towards this book, I found myself seated one evening ready to dive in. Stacked & waiting for me were the books I had yet to read, among them Dostoevsky, Gogol, Steinbeck, Christie, & Jackson, all monster writers with wickedly brain-bending stories for me to consume. This I note, specifically for the reader who dawns judgment on the diverse bibliophile.
Readers have a special gleaming opportunity when they practice their craft. The world begins to open like the sea; everything grows, becoming glorious & wonderful, no one book accomplishes this alone, as no one writer has perfected their craft without the efforts of another. Looking at this pile waiting patiently for me, I wondered where among the tomes that have created my reader’s mind, might Applegate’s stories sit comfortably as well.
My appreciation for this book is difficult to quantify. Within the mere novella that one beholds, shaped coyly by the cover art that depicts the physiognomic transformation of a young boy, the story within presents the twists & turns of glory found in the science fiction genre.
In essence, this is a story about a group of young friends who begin their quest to save Earth & the human species. The main character & the story’s narrator, Jake, is young, one might be generous by saying he is thirteen; one might be forgiven for believing him to be twelve.
One evening after a few hours spent at the mall, Jake & his friends—Marco, Tobias, Cassie, & Rachel—decide to take a shortcut home, wandering through an abandoned construction site where they are met by a lowering spaceship.
The driver of the ship, an alien known as an Andalite, speaks to them through a form of telepathy & explains that another group of aliens known as the Yeerks have waged war on planet Earth & intend to colonize all human life. The Andalite, who was fighting to protect Earth, grants the group of friends the power to transform into any animal species they come into physical contact with by absorbing the animal’s Deoxyribonucleic acid (DNA).
What ensues is a rapidly moving, fast-paced struggle. The young group is unsure whether they should even believe what they are being told. They feel conflicted about their role in safeguarding their home & also about the violence that would ensue should they decide to engage in war against the Yeerks.
Reading this book as an adult allowed for an interesting perspective. While I fully appreciated that Applegate might simply have her characters scurry around town worrying about the reality of their alleged new powers, I was surprised to find that she endeavoured to write with gumption. In fact, Applegate’s decision to ensure that the cast of characters was fully realized bode so well for the story that I felt myself immediately immersed.
The main struggle of this first installment of the series focused on laying the groundwork for the reader to understand who these characters are. Jake is a character who is apprehensively confident & insightful, he has a traditional family nucleus & an older brother with whom he shares a warm relationship. I pause here to reflect on the value of this setting.
As I have been working my way through a few series that featured rather heavily in my youth, I note that many authors publishing books in the 80s & 90s disregarded the value of family support. That is not to say that a person without the traditional domestic setting is lesser than another but rather that many authors emphasized the casual abandonment of parents. These stories often lay claim over the boisterous banality of a young life & the tired annoyance of a parent towards their child.
In contrast, Applegate witnessed the world around her & found a way to include a dynamic domestic reality for her characters. While Jake has a brother who cares about him & parents who are warmly attentive, Tobias is an orphan who is shipped from one family member to another. Marco lives with the worry that his father might commit suicide as a consequence of his immense grief over the passing of his wife & expresses this fact openly & earnestly to his friends, each of whom values his honesty & reality, validating his sentiments.
These three experiences feature throughout the novel without lingering over one aspect too long. A reader who is within the target age range for this book will be able to gauge why each character acts the way they do without necessarily becoming bogged down by the gruesome details as might a more mature reader.
As I learned about each character & was allowed to witness them at play, I forgot entirely that I was reading a book. When finally, I recalled that this was a sweet treat of a story, it was over & I was left reeling; how had I spent all these years without such enjoyment caused by this book?
As silly as this seems it is the clearest way I have of describing my experience. Applegate took such care to work against the stereotypical approach of middle-grade fiction; the intricacy of the characters & their dynamics both within themselves, that which only the reader comes to learn, & among each other, was so refreshing. The 90s sense of humour shone brightly as the characters made crass jokes & exhibited self-deprecating quips.
Because Applegate spent time allowing her characters to bloom & grow, the rising action of the plot felt enticing & riveting. The friends must decide whether they believe this war is one worth engaging in & also, whether their new skill is something they can morally accept.
During the time in which this story was published the intricacies of DNA were not as well-known as they are today. Sequencing & the thorough breakdown of the molecule might not have been factors that a middle-grade reader cared much about, even less so given the dynamic of this book. However, I believe that undercutting the eager mind from engaging in a subject simply because they are not yet well-versed would be deeply ignorant.
Had I read this book in my youth I might have felt similarly to how I do now. I spent a great portion of my early adulthood consuming non-fiction, whose goal was the exhibition of DNA & human genetics. The study of such biology has always been quite fascinating to me & I would wager a guess that those lucky young readers of yore who absorbed the genomics of this story may well now find themselves among the great thinkers of genome research & those who wander through the imagination of fiction, publishing the work that will enthuse a future generation.
As always, the science behind the super-human power to morph into animals left me wondering about its specifics. I longed for the group of friends to grow confident & explore the parameters of the Andalite’s gift. I began wondering where they might go in order to gather the DNA of large animals & who they might rely on to gather intel on different species.
Stories of this calibre engage readers in a variety of ways, one of which is the necessity of revisiting theories as the story unfolds. I wondered whether the friends might be able to engage the museums where dinosaur DNA was alleged to be held & whether they would be able to warp & manipulate the DNA they had acquired to combat the ultra-giant monster of the Yeerks. I suppose I will have to continue reading to see what becomes of their skill.
Ultimately, what made this book so enjoyable was the apparent care the author took in building it. The world of the young friends is filled with equally unique & true experiences, most of which the reader will have lived or witnessed themselves. For this reason, it was easy to root for the friends & hope for their success.
As they transformed into the Siberian Tiger, the African Savanna Elephant, & the Red-tailed Hawk, the reader will be along for the adventure with them. The lines between the written word of the storybook & the realism of the reader’s quarters will be blurred; soon both the characters & the reader will find themselves sneaking down the stairway to the resting pool in the school’s hidden basement. The winning streak of luck & courage that will leave the group reeling, hoping for a better day, always blows winds into the sails of the ship that has sailed.
Readers may find in this first installment the cultural marker of a story written with gumption, poise, & purpose. Taunting the reader with the mystery of youth & the bliss of naivety that was shed.
The characters will easily make their mark & leave readers rooting for the day that Tobias is set free from his form, when the will to power may riddle the mind of the possessed with enough fire to eviscerate the insane colonizer of the Yeerk. I eagerly pen this review in anticipation of the next book in the Animorph series & the opportunity that is sure to come as the young protagonists battle the intergalactic armies of evil for freedom here, on Earth.
I opened this book with trepidation. When these books were first published, I had not been among the crowd of young happy readers who consumed them. I had seen them in the library, & witnessed the eagerness of other readers as they fondled the covers, exchanging their joy with a friend, but for reasons I cannot necessarily express, this series existed on the periphery of my young life. Although I write to you now during a decade of life that far exceeds the target age range of the reader, I find myself leaning on my beliefs as they hold true now, as ever; a good book is a good book, no matter who it is written for.
Selecting this first book of the series, which accounts for 54 books in total, felt like an odd coin toss. I was eager, I do admit, to read the story that had captivated so many readers. I was also apprehensive about what I might find; worrying as I was that the joy would be wrapped in a gift that I was too old to appreciate.
This admission is tedious; one need only scroll through my reviews to note that I read nearly every style, genre, & type of story. I suppose that my feelings reflect a trepidation regarding the appreciation for something that holds so much nostalgia. It is an odd thing to describe but, it holds its place as all other feelings do & so, I have included it here.
As I worked through my eager insecurity towards this book, I found myself seated one evening ready to dive in. Stacked & waiting for me were the books I had yet to read, among them Dostoevsky, Gogol, Steinbeck, Christie, & Jackson, all monster writers with wickedly brain-bending stories for me to consume. This I note, specifically for the reader who dawns judgment on the diverse bibliophile.
Readers have a special gleaming opportunity when they practice their craft. The world begins to open like the sea; everything grows, becoming glorious & wonderful, no one book accomplishes this alone, as no one writer has perfected their craft without the efforts of another. Looking at this pile waiting patiently for me, I wondered where among the tomes that have created my reader’s mind, might Applegate’s stories sit comfortably as well.
My appreciation for this book is difficult to quantify. Within the mere novella that one beholds, shaped coyly by the cover art that depicts the physiognomic transformation of a young boy, the story within presents the twists & turns of glory found in the science fiction genre.
In essence, this is a story about a group of young friends who begin their quest to save Earth & the human species. The main character & the story’s narrator, Jake, is young, one might be generous by saying he is thirteen; one might be forgiven for believing him to be twelve.
One evening after a few hours spent at the mall, Jake & his friends—Marco, Tobias, Cassie, & Rachel—decide to take a shortcut home, wandering through an abandoned construction site where they are met by a lowering spaceship.
The driver of the ship, an alien known as an Andalite, speaks to them through a form of telepathy & explains that another group of aliens known as the Yeerks have waged war on planet Earth & intend to colonize all human life. The Andalite, who was fighting to protect Earth, grants the group of friends the power to transform into any animal species they come into physical contact with by absorbing the animal’s Deoxyribonucleic acid (DNA).
What ensues is a rapidly moving, fast-paced struggle. The young group is unsure whether they should even believe what they are being told. They feel conflicted about their role in safeguarding their home & also about the violence that would ensue should they decide to engage in war against the Yeerks.
Reading this book as an adult allowed for an interesting perspective. While I fully appreciated that Applegate might simply have her characters scurry around town worrying about the reality of their alleged new powers, I was surprised to find that she endeavoured to write with gumption. In fact, Applegate’s decision to ensure that the cast of characters was fully realized bode so well for the story that I felt myself immediately immersed.
The main struggle of this first installment of the series focused on laying the groundwork for the reader to understand who these characters are. Jake is a character who is apprehensively confident & insightful, he has a traditional family nucleus & an older brother with whom he shares a warm relationship. I pause here to reflect on the value of this setting.
As I have been working my way through a few series that featured rather heavily in my youth, I note that many authors publishing books in the 80s & 90s disregarded the value of family support. That is not to say that a person without the traditional domestic setting is lesser than another but rather that many authors emphasized the casual abandonment of parents. These stories often lay claim over the boisterous banality of a young life & the tired annoyance of a parent towards their child.
In contrast, Applegate witnessed the world around her & found a way to include a dynamic domestic reality for her characters. While Jake has a brother who cares about him & parents who are warmly attentive, Tobias is an orphan who is shipped from one family member to another. Marco lives with the worry that his father might commit suicide as a consequence of his immense grief over the passing of his wife & expresses this fact openly & earnestly to his friends, each of whom values his honesty & reality, validating his sentiments.
These three experiences feature throughout the novel without lingering over one aspect too long. A reader who is within the target age range for this book will be able to gauge why each character acts the way they do without necessarily becoming bogged down by the gruesome details as might a more mature reader.
As I learned about each character & was allowed to witness them at play, I forgot entirely that I was reading a book. When finally, I recalled that this was a sweet treat of a story, it was over & I was left reeling; how had I spent all these years without such enjoyment caused by this book?
As silly as this seems it is the clearest way I have of describing my experience. Applegate took such care to work against the stereotypical approach of middle-grade fiction; the intricacy of the characters & their dynamics both within themselves, that which only the reader comes to learn, & among each other, was so refreshing. The 90s sense of humour shone brightly as the characters made crass jokes & exhibited self-deprecating quips.
Because Applegate spent time allowing her characters to bloom & grow, the rising action of the plot felt enticing & riveting. The friends must decide whether they believe this war is one worth engaging in & also, whether their new skill is something they can morally accept.
During the time in which this story was published the intricacies of DNA were not as well-known as they are today. Sequencing & the thorough breakdown of the molecule might not have been factors that a middle-grade reader cared much about, even less so given the dynamic of this book. However, I believe that undercutting the eager mind from engaging in a subject simply because they are not yet well-versed would be deeply ignorant.
Had I read this book in my youth I might have felt similarly to how I do now. I spent a great portion of my early adulthood consuming non-fiction, whose goal was the exhibition of DNA & human genetics. The study of such biology has always been quite fascinating to me & I would wager a guess that those lucky young readers of yore who absorbed the genomics of this story may well now find themselves among the great thinkers of genome research & those who wander through the imagination of fiction, publishing the work that will enthuse a future generation.
As always, the science behind the super-human power to morph into animals left me wondering about its specifics. I longed for the group of friends to grow confident & explore the parameters of the Andalite’s gift. I began wondering where they might go in order to gather the DNA of large animals & who they might rely on to gather intel on different species.
Stories of this calibre engage readers in a variety of ways, one of which is the necessity of revisiting theories as the story unfolds. I wondered whether the friends might be able to engage the museums where dinosaur DNA was alleged to be held & whether they would be able to warp & manipulate the DNA they had acquired to combat the ultra-giant monster of the Yeerks. I suppose I will have to continue reading to see what becomes of their skill.
Ultimately, what made this book so enjoyable was the apparent care the author took in building it. The world of the young friends is filled with equally unique & true experiences, most of which the reader will have lived or witnessed themselves. For this reason, it was easy to root for the friends & hope for their success.
As they transformed into the Siberian Tiger, the African Savanna Elephant, & the Red-tailed Hawk, the reader will be along for the adventure with them. The lines between the written word of the storybook & the realism of the reader’s quarters will be blurred; soon both the characters & the reader will find themselves sneaking down the stairway to the resting pool in the school’s hidden basement. The winning streak of luck & courage that will leave the group reeling, hoping for a better day, always blows winds into the sails of the ship that has sailed.
Readers may find in this first installment the cultural marker of a story written with gumption, poise, & purpose. Taunting the reader with the mystery of youth & the bliss of naivety that was shed.
The characters will easily make their mark & leave readers rooting for the day that Tobias is set free from his form, when the will to power may riddle the mind of the possessed with enough fire to eviscerate the insane colonizer of the Yeerk. I eagerly pen this review in anticipation of the next book in the Animorph series & the opportunity that is sure to come as the young protagonists battle the intergalactic armies of evil for freedom here, on Earth.
This entire review has been hidden because of spoilers.
March 15, 2024
Jake's POV.
March 30, 2024
This book was an absolute blast to read!! Very unique concept and a great start to a series. Never a dull moment, always action packed and suspenseful, even quite humorous at times! Don’t be fooled though, it gets surprisingly dark at times!
July 28, 2022
still slaps
June 8, 2022
Actually fun if you can separate how quickly these kids gave into a random alien - no questions asked - who decided to give them anamorphic powers to stop a bad alien invasion!
I don’t like how Jake one of our main characters became the de facto leader. It made no sense to me especially considering that Cassie was obviously the one with the most sense, skill and bravery in my opinion.
Anyway, as an adult this book was kind of a slog to get through. However, I can see that if I was a kid I might be into it!
Shout out to the Tumblr crew who hit me up to ask if I wanted to be a part of their Animorphs read along! Pretty awesome. Really funny commentary.
I don’t like how Jake one of our main characters became the de facto leader. It made no sense to me especially considering that Cassie was obviously the one with the most sense, skill and bravery in my opinion.
Anyway, as an adult this book was kind of a slog to get through. However, I can see that if I was a kid I might be into it!
Shout out to the Tumblr crew who hit me up to ask if I wanted to be a part of their Animorphs read along! Pretty awesome. Really funny commentary.
October 3, 2023
A spontaneous audio download because my local library has suddenly added the whole series to the catalogue. This was a really fun blast from the past. Ticked all my nostalgia boxes.
August 4, 2022
4,5 stars - English Ebook
The wildly popular books by K.A. Applegate are back! The Animorphs return in this update of the classic series.
The Earth is being invaded, but no one knows about it. When Jake, Rachel, Tobias, Cassie, and Marco stumble upon a downed alien spaceship and its dying pilot, they're given an incredible power, they can transform into any animal they touch.
With it, they become Animorphs, the unlikely champions in a secret war for the planet. And the enemies they're fighting could be anyone, even the people closest to them.
My kids and I all read this whole series when they were 8, 9, and 10. Now they're in their twenties. We're getting hooked on these again! (But Kindle is better.) I think all our old hardcopies got loaned out to my kids' many friends.
I needed to read these again. I just get tired of all the harsh situations, complex personalities, cruel behavior and so forth I see in so many "kid's books".
This series has plenty of violence but it doesn't dwell on the gore. It has interesting, maybe complex personalities but their hearts are always where they should be.
And the cruel behavior is strictly by the bad guys or, er, monsters. Sometimes the action is tense, sometimes I literally laugh out loud, but I always read with a sense of security that I will not be grossed out, offended, or disgusted. THAT is a good book characteristic for me.
This series provides so many relaxing and entertaining hours of reading. A classic series for our family.
The wildly popular books by K.A. Applegate are back! The Animorphs return in this update of the classic series.
The Earth is being invaded, but no one knows about it. When Jake, Rachel, Tobias, Cassie, and Marco stumble upon a downed alien spaceship and its dying pilot, they're given an incredible power, they can transform into any animal they touch.
With it, they become Animorphs, the unlikely champions in a secret war for the planet. And the enemies they're fighting could be anyone, even the people closest to them.
My kids and I all read this whole series when they were 8, 9, and 10. Now they're in their twenties. We're getting hooked on these again! (But Kindle is better.) I think all our old hardcopies got loaned out to my kids' many friends.
I needed to read these again. I just get tired of all the harsh situations, complex personalities, cruel behavior and so forth I see in so many "kid's books".
This series has plenty of violence but it doesn't dwell on the gore. It has interesting, maybe complex personalities but their hearts are always where they should be.
And the cruel behavior is strictly by the bad guys or, er, monsters. Sometimes the action is tense, sometimes I literally laugh out loud, but I always read with a sense of security that I will not be grossed out, offended, or disgusted. THAT is a good book characteristic for me.
This series provides so many relaxing and entertaining hours of reading. A classic series for our family.
Read
January 16, 2023this was bonkers in the best way. childhood is about discovering The Horrors.
January 16, 2013
Brought to you by The Moonlight Library!
I’ve been thinking about this review for a while. There’s two major difficulties: it’s often hard to write a great review of an amazing book, and how does one review a book one has read a billionty times since one was ten years old? (That was nearly twenty years ago. I SAY NEARLY I AM NOT THAT OLD.) This is an establishing review as well, so it will be longer than my other ones.
Let’s start from the beginning. I first saw this book when I was ten years old in my school library. It sat alongside book #2. I seem to recall half of my class telling me about this book, because #2 had a girl turning into a cat and everyone knew I liked cats (as should be obvious from my blog header). I was tempted to read #2 first because as an eight year old I wasn’t aware that book series had this thing called ‘continuity’ – I’d read Goosebumps, the Babysitter’s Club, and the Saddle Club, each of which you could pull out a random book and enjoy a stand-alone story – especially Goosebumps, of which most of the books were unrelated. I was unprepared for the overarching story arc that encompassed all the books. This was especially relevant when I read #2: The Visitor, but we’ll get to that in the next review
In #1 The Invasion, Jake is our narrator. He’s an average guy – he’s got good grades, is good-looking, likes basketball and video games. His best friend is short, annoying Hispanic Marco. His crush is black farm girl Cassie. His cousin is blonde Amazon warrior Rachel. There’s also this weird, quiet kid Tobias. The five take a walk through a construction site, meet a dying alien who warns them of a silent invasion and gives them a power to fight back: the power to morph. That means they can turn into any animal they touch. Unfortunately, so can their greatest enemy: Visser Three. He’s the alien leading the invasion and wants nothing more than to destroy our trusty Animorphs. He’s also scary in a love-to-hate kind of way: psychotic, ambitious, and completely ruthless.
The book follows the kids’ first adventures: acquiring powerful ‘battle morphs’ and attacking the Yeerk pool, where the invading parasitic slugs have to return every three days. Not everything turns out OK, which is what I love about Applegate. She’s not afraid to give us an unhappy ending, even in her children’s fiction. Looking back, I can see that the prose is written with a breakneck pace. You don’t want to tear your eyes away from it. It’s so breathtaking that the non-essential parts are left out and your brain has to race to catch up. There are also a few mistakes that Applegate would later refer to as KASUs (Katherine Applegate Screws Up) such as Tobias in cat morph able to hear Jake’s thoughts, which was removed from the reprint.
The best thing about these novels, what made them so popular and what made Applegate want to write them in the first place is looking through the eyes of the human as they’re morphing and describing everything in vivid detail, even the gross parts, and looking at the world through the eyes of the animal filtered by our human narrator. Applegate really gets into the head of Jake’s dog, lizard, and tiger. It’s joyful, scary, comforting, amazing. And that’s what made these books so special.
April 1, 2011
This was my face the entire time I was reading this: :-D
Really, I couldn't stop grinning. Because Animorphs defined my adolescence. From my first book, received Easter Sunday 1997, through the bitter end (when I was finishing my sophomore year of high school), Animorphs was with me. I met my best friends through these books (and I met three of the women who stood for me on my wedding day through our shared love of Animorphs). So when I heard these were being re-released, it was fabulous. And when I got my galley copies of 1 and 2 in the mail, I sat down immediately and started reading.
Not much has changed. It's still easy to read the book in an hour. All the famous lines are still these (I cackled at "Idiot teenagers with a death wish"). The screwups are gone. It felt wonderful to slip back into this familiar story, almost to where I could recite line-for-line what was coming up next (I don't *quite* have it memorized, but everything just felt familiar).
Scholastic started re-releasing Baby-Sitters Club books and I read the new prequel when it debuted, and what I was struck by in the prequel was how clunky a lot of it felt. The dialog and narration didn't feel entirely natural. Perhaps I'm partial to The Invasion because I loved Animorphs way more than I did BSC, but I believed back in the day and that belief is reaffirmed now: these books were written to be read by anybody. The dialog is smooth and could have come from any contemporary MG or YA novel. It's rough and violent and bleak in a way I haven't seen in a book for awhile - it's not gratuitously so, but the fact that we don't cut away from the darker parts underscores that these are deathly serious books.
I am SO GLAD these books are coming back for a new generation of kids to enjoy. This is absolutely classic 90s alien invasion science fiction and should be read by everyone!
Really, I couldn't stop grinning. Because Animorphs defined my adolescence. From my first book, received Easter Sunday 1997, through the bitter end (when I was finishing my sophomore year of high school), Animorphs was with me. I met my best friends through these books (and I met three of the women who stood for me on my wedding day through our shared love of Animorphs). So when I heard these were being re-released, it was fabulous. And when I got my galley copies of 1 and 2 in the mail, I sat down immediately and started reading.
Not much has changed. It's still easy to read the book in an hour. All the famous lines are still these (I cackled at "Idiot teenagers with a death wish"). The screwups are gone. It felt wonderful to slip back into this familiar story, almost to where I could recite line-for-line what was coming up next (I don't *quite* have it memorized, but everything just felt familiar).
Scholastic started re-releasing Baby-Sitters Club books and I read the new prequel when it debuted, and what I was struck by in the prequel was how clunky a lot of it felt. The dialog and narration didn't feel entirely natural. Perhaps I'm partial to The Invasion because I loved Animorphs way more than I did BSC, but I believed back in the day and that belief is reaffirmed now: these books were written to be read by anybody. The dialog is smooth and could have come from any contemporary MG or YA novel. It's rough and violent and bleak in a way I haven't seen in a book for awhile - it's not gratuitously so, but the fact that we don't cut away from the darker parts underscores that these are deathly serious books.
I am SO GLAD these books are coming back for a new generation of kids to enjoy. This is absolutely classic 90s alien invasion science fiction and should be read by everyone!
May 19, 2011
Loved these books as a kid, of course. The regular visit to the bookstore for new each installment was a big highlight of each month.
What's really amazing is the power these books have when you go back to them. There was a time when I was depressed, and in my angsty boredom I looked at the full Animorphs collection sitting on my bookshelf and grabbed one of them to read. At first, the large font and simple syntax were a bit jarring, and I didn't know how well these books would hold up. But almost immediately I was absorbed back into the heads of these characters, and I remembered all the ways I identified with them and related to them. The plots were as thrilling as ever, but this time I paid more attention to the ways many complex ethical issues, questions, and debates were woven into these stories. I could see more parallels between the world of Animorphs and the real world I was learning about. I tore through the rest of the series after glancing through that one book, and somewhere along the way I snapped out of my depression. (It might have been the book when Marco gets depressed and Cassie is all sympathetic but Jake just says "Marco. Snap out of it.") I felt stronger as a person after reliving this war through the characters I knew so well. The characters will leave their mark on you, and revisiting these books is a powerful way to remember that influence.
I'm so glad to see this series back on bookstore shelves.
What's really amazing is the power these books have when you go back to them. There was a time when I was depressed, and in my angsty boredom I looked at the full Animorphs collection sitting on my bookshelf and grabbed one of them to read. At first, the large font and simple syntax were a bit jarring, and I didn't know how well these books would hold up. But almost immediately I was absorbed back into the heads of these characters, and I remembered all the ways I identified with them and related to them. The plots were as thrilling as ever, but this time I paid more attention to the ways many complex ethical issues, questions, and debates were woven into these stories. I could see more parallels between the world of Animorphs and the real world I was learning about. I tore through the rest of the series after glancing through that one book, and somewhere along the way I snapped out of my depression. (It might have been the book when Marco gets depressed and Cassie is all sympathetic but Jake just says "Marco. Snap out of it.") I felt stronger as a person after reliving this war through the characters I knew so well. The characters will leave their mark on you, and revisiting these books is a powerful way to remember that influence.
I'm so glad to see this series back on bookstore shelves.
July 11, 2008
I have every single one of these books, from #1-54 of the regular series, the Ellimist/Andalite/Hork-Bajir Chronicles, Visser, all four Megamorphs, and the two Alternamorphs choose-your-own-adventure books. I have read most of these more than once.
While the books are very very formulaic and repetitive, particularly in action sequences and morphing descriptions ("He tucked back his wings and went into a dive..." "The feather pattern came up on my skin and burst into 3D..."), they have very lovable characters. My personal favorite was Marco, mostly because he was the sarcastic asshole of the group, and usually the funniest (albeit often outdone unintentionally by Ax).
Also, they are unafraid to do real damage to the characters, short of killing them, looking into ethics on a level that is startling for a children's series especially. They are constantly faced with the concerns of killing beings that are not under their own control, and eventually this spreads to making sacrifices of human-controllers (and non-controllers) as the situation becomes ever more desperate. They do not escape the war unscathed, and the lesson here ultimately is that world-saving does not breed heroes, as well as showing the horrors of war. Cue Brando.
While the books are very very formulaic and repetitive, particularly in action sequences and morphing descriptions ("He tucked back his wings and went into a dive..." "The feather pattern came up on my skin and burst into 3D..."), they have very lovable characters. My personal favorite was Marco, mostly because he was the sarcastic asshole of the group, and usually the funniest (albeit often outdone unintentionally by Ax).
Also, they are unafraid to do real damage to the characters, short of killing them, looking into ethics on a level that is startling for a children's series especially. They are constantly faced with the concerns of killing beings that are not under their own control, and eventually this spreads to making sacrifices of human-controllers (and non-controllers) as the situation becomes ever more desperate. They do not escape the war unscathed, and the lesson here ultimately is that world-saving does not breed heroes, as well as showing the horrors of war. Cue Brando.
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