The first thing that always caught your eye were the covers. They stood completely apart from the fantasy-heavy YA books of the time. Each cover was like a magnet, drawing you across a school gymnasium during the yearly Scholastic Book Fair or leaving you staring slack-jawed in awe at the display in a bookstore window. The first one stands out in my memory, in particular: a boy looks out from the cover, utterly plain and ordinary in every way—except that he was slowly changing into a lizard through the magic of the finest rudimentary photoshop that 1996 had to offer. It was a startling revelation of a cover, fueling young imaginations for years to come.
There was absolutely nothing like K.A. Applegate’s Animorphs series back in the late ’90s and there may never be another series like it again. So why has it been largely forgotten?
Children’s books, before the groundbreaking advent of the YA genre juggernaut, tended to lean heavily into fantasy when it wasn’t about young women dying tragically (looking at you, Lurlene McDaniel). Science fiction was a rare find on those shelves, at least in my experience. The closest thing you would get were the slightly supernatural slasher novels of Christopher Pike, or R.L. Stine’s Fear Street series. If you wanted aliens or space ships you were completely out of luck. It seems strange, since the ’90s were huge for science fiction on the screen, but it took a surprisingly long time for the genre to hit the bookshelves in the young adult section with the same blockbuster force. K.A. Applegate arguably made the biggest splash with Animorphs, which quickly became a bestselling series—instilling in at least some of its young readers a set of lifelong fears involving ants, aliens, and authority figures.
Animorphs was absolutely perfect. It featured a diverse cast of characters, including various strong female characters, and was able to balance weighty real-life topics with the thrilling threat of an alien apocalypse. The series handles war in an incredibly adult way, filtered through the lens of aliens and high school. The characters are iconic and still well remembered to this day by a generation of young readers: the tragic figure that is Tobias, the badass that is Rachel, the charming alien friend Ax. The alien threat was vivid, silent, and frightening. It was a They Live! for the middle school kids of the ’90s mixed with the primal wish fulfillment of being able to transform into animals. It balanced horror and humor on a fine knife’s edge, keeping young readers on their toes and awake all night. Ask any hardcore Animorphs fan and they’ll immediately be able to name at least one thing that delighted them about the series along with something that caused some minor psychological trauma (or perhaps just occasional nightmares) for years to come—these books had everything!
And yet, the series seems to have been lost to time. Despite being hugely popular, it never achieved the success or the staying power of, say, the Harry Potter books. Animorphs tried hard to break into other mediums, including a cringeworthy TV series that aired on Nickelodeon, but never stuck the landing. It burned bright and then faded away, racking up a troublingly high body count in its final installments. Scholastic tried to re-release the series in 2011 but was met with tepid interest. In a world of bleak YA novels that seem to offer readers an endless game of Choose Your Own Dystopia, the Animorphs books seem somewhat quaint in comparison. Despite this, for those of us who grew up with the series, just seeing those iconic covers again is like being punched in the sternum by nostalgia.
Animorphs made such an immediate and lasting impression on its target audience because the characters felt like actual teenagers, and the problems they encountered felt organic and realistic. Even when the series was dealing with death or abuse it did so with a down-to-earth vibe that never felt like an After School Special. The books tackled difficult topics like death, depression, drug abuse, parental neglect, and bullying with an air of care and compassion. The aliens, called the Yeerks, were legitimately scary and were depicted in a way that made them feel like a real threat—I can’t tell you the number of nightmares I had because of them. They were small, slug-like creatures that would take over your body by entering your ear canal and nesting in your brain. Anyone could be a Yeerk: your principal, the police, your parents. If that premise doesn’t keep you up at night, you are made of stronger stuff than I am. The aliens opposing the Yeerks—and who gave our team of intrepid teen heroes the ability to shapeshift—were strange, deer-centaur-esque aliens called Andalites. They were wise and ethereal, absolutely bizarre and otherworldly. Between them, the Yeerks and the Andalites form the compelling sci-fi core of the the world K.A. Applegate built.
The series was completed in 2001, and sprawls out across almost sixty books. K.A. Applegate (actually husband-and-wife writing team Katherine Applegate and Michael Grant) wrote roughly half of them. The rest were crafted through the time-honored tradition of ghostwriting, with other writers working from a detailed outline provided by Grant and Applegate, under their supervision. So many book series for young adults were built this way and it’s been a successful strategy. Carolyn Keene, the author credited for the Nancy Drew mysteries, straight-up never existed, for example. Ann M. Martin, the author behind the insanely popular Baby-Sitters Club series, claims to have written less than half of the books. This was a viable way to keep up the grueling pace of children’s publishing, particularly in the ’90s. Back in those days, books for children and teens came out with headspinning frequency. Animorph books came out quarterly, each clocking anywhere between 150 to 200 pages. The breakneck pace was a boon to hungry fans with allowance money burning a hole in their pocket but required a stable of ghostwriters in order to meet the demand. Adult genre fans are used to waiting years for the next volume in their beloved series. Imagine George R. R. Martin releasing a Song of Ice and Fire book every three months! (No, wait, don’t imagine that. Oh no, stop crying, I’m sorry. The Winds of Winter will come out some day, I promise!)
You can’t really call Animorphs timeless, honestly. They take place in a kind of ’90s pop culture milieu that simply doesn’t exist anymore. The Yeerks invasion would have never worked in our world of ubiquitous social media and constant surveillance. That’s part of the charm now. Can you remember a world without Twitter notifications and incessant email pings, where your biggest concern was if you should start the latest Animorphs book before or after the new Legends of the Hidden Temple episode? What is timeless, however, are the characters. They felt like your best friends and plunged into breathtaking adventures on their quest to save the world. Jake, Marco, and Tobias were each amazing in their own way, but the real stars were Cassie and Rachel.
When it came to female heroes that were easy to identify with in most YA books in the ’90s, I always found the pickings to be rather slim. You could try to see yourself in the conniving fashion plates that populated the Sweet Valley High books, or maybe imagine yourself dying of some terrible disease while your true love watched, or being murdered by a serial killer in a Fear Street book. TV was a little better, with Sarah Michelle Gellar’s slayer heroine in Buffy and the hard-fighting women of Xena: Warrior Princess reigning supreme, but the closest thing you got in young adult fiction were the brave women of Tamora Pierce’s fantasy novels (which I wrote about here).
If you didn’t like dragons and knights, though, you were out of luck…that is, until Animorphs’ Rachel shifted into a bear and kicked the door down. She was the epitome of a badass, brave in the face of danger and skilled in battle. Cassie, on the other hand, was an environmentalist and a wary participant in the alien war. She had the strongest shifting ability of the team—as an “estreen,” her natural morphing abilities allow her to approach the level of an artist when turning herself into different creatures. Cassie and Rachel were two sides of the same coin: strong and fearless women tossed into a war, trying to survive as best they could with their values and sanity intact.
The series was fraught with heartbreak and loss. Tobias is the first casualty, after staying in his hawk form over the two hour morphing time limit. He spends the entire series trapped in that form, having forfeited his human shape. I cried so many teenaged tears for him. His mistake, the plot of the first book, sets the tone of the series. There would be humor and adventure throughout the books, but there would also be terrible and unfair tragedy. Tobias was still alive, at least. It’s Rachel who makes the ultimate sacrifice, dying at the end of the series in order to prevent the alien infestation from spreading. She’s honored as the hero she is when the series ends with the human race learning about the alien threat—and the teenaged heroes who had been courageously holding it at bay for so many years.
I faithfully read every book in the Animorphs series, constantly bugging my parents to get me the latest volume when it came out. I dutifully circled the books in red on the Scholastic Book Fair order forms. I asked for them every Christmas and managed to weasel a few extra volumes during long family road trips. My teachers confiscated them when I tried to sneak in a few chapters during science class, and I once turned in an ill-fated Animorphs-inspired diorama—one that involved pipe cleaners and very sad construction paper-monstrosities that I had the gall to call “animals”—to my very bewildered English teacher. These books shaped my adolescence and instilled in me a real love of science fiction. For the longest time I had thought that I only liked fantasy stories, and I barely read anything modern. Animorphs lit a fire in me for science fiction that burns to this day. They were a stepping stone that led to grabbing the likes of Michael Crichton and Ray Bradbury from the adult shelves at the library.
Animorphs will always have a cherished place in my heart—a place that feels eternally like summer vacation and smells like a school gym full of fresh new books. Those of us who fell under the spell of these books as kids know that we need to keep them alive—after all, the war might not be over… Who knows who might be a Yeerk or not? I still sometimes wonder, decades later!
Animorphs were a whirlwind of a series, one that left a mark stamped on every reader drawn into their world. It’s a shame the books have all but vanished—they would make an incredible Netflix series, and CGI is so much cheaper (and better) then it used to be. I’m convinced that today’s technology would allow for some really cool and inventive approaches to adapting these stories. With the push of ’90s nostalgia stronger than ever right now, I have my fingers crossed that someone will revive the series properly—I, for one, would much rather see Animorphs come back into style then scrunchies. K.A. Applegate did an outstanding job building a world that held real meaning for a generation of readers, and sixty books is nothing to sneeze at. The characters Applegate created still live on in the minds of the series’ fans—and those bright, jarring, iconic covers are still some of the coolest, weirdest things we’ve ever seen.
Meghan Ball is an avid reader, writer, and lifelong fan of science fiction and fantasy. When she isn’t losing to a video game or playing the guitar badly, she’s writing short fiction and spending way too much time on Twitter. You can find her there @EldritchGirl. She currently lives in a weird part of New Jersey.
There needs to be a campaign to get an Animorphs revival going on Netflix or something. There is so much potential in this series for good TV.
The TV series failed because it was live-action series with late 90s technology and a Nickelodeon sitcom budget… The visual effects had no chance to do the series justice, but still so expensive that the acting and writing had to suffer as a result. Animorphs could be successful as a big-budget CGI series or movie adaptation today, but risky considering the limited pop culture footprint of the series… I think an anime adaptation could be perfect and cost-effective and I don’t know why it hasn’t happened yet.
Excellent article. I would say it’s the series that sparked my love of fantasy / science fiction as well. The death aspect was also very real compared to other books. The only thing that traumatized me was the ways she left the ending; I’ve always hated lack of closure since.
FTFY.
But I did enjoy them as a kid.
I actually have a short article on Animorphs coming out as part of a book next year (Aliens in Pop Culture: A Guide to Visitors From Outer Space, ed. by Michael Levy and Farah Mendlesohn). In reviewing the series I was surprised to realize how dark and intense it was. Because I learned to read thanks to this series (I mean that quite literally), I’m wondering how much of my aesthetic is a product of Applegate’s books. I’ve had a hard time with so many stories that pander to young audiences, and maybe part of that is thanks to Animorphs being so challenging–Tobias’ trapped as a hawk from book one (to say nothing of the psychological torture that is book three!), the David arc (dude was seriously messed up), etc. Too bad Applegate’s not exactly a great stylist, and many of her characters’ quirks are extremely dated, but the overall storytelling endures better than maybe it should. I agree that there’s definitely potential here for some sort of reimagining, and would be happy to see it!
If they make it into a Netflix series, we might need a slightly less tragic ending. Ramming the blade ship at the end was too much for child-me.
@@.-@ you’re certainly right, but The Team had only one white kid. Jake and Rachel were Jewish (explicitly and early identified IIRC – I wanna say book two brought it up?), Cassie black, and Marco hispanic. Plus Tobias was a hawk. It’s fair to call them a diverse cast.
* thinks about Winds of Winter *
* starts sobbing uncontrollably *
YES, YES YES, A GOOGOLPLEX OF TIMES, YES! Thank you for finally saying in a large, relatively well read public forum what I’ve been saying since 2000. In this times of fantasy dystopias, abusive vampire relationships, werewolf pedophilia, virtual reality deathgames and ridiculously powerful main characters with incestous harems (that last currently available only in japan, but since Oreimo has already ben distributed in the US and is apparantly a bestseller…), we need the return of Scholastic’s bestest child-soldier PTSD terrorist cell freedom fighter budget Power Rangers!
The ants, oh the ants. The insect morphs! The thinly veiled parodies of contemporary media. And Cassie, the semi-masochistic sink of hatred and stupidity who kept turning into a wolf even though it meant regularly getting her ass kicked and how painful it was, when she could be something harder to kill and hurt! The fact she can’t seem to comprehend morphing into a human is essentially cloning a new body using your own material and there’s really no moral issues involved unless you steal their credit card beause the only mind in their is your own, you idiot!
Sadly, we’re unlikely to get a revival. The current trend is toward power fantasies… which, haha, Animorphs definitely is not if you actually know how to read.
My favourite YA series ever.
Isn’t it somewhat implied that Tobias deliberately stayed in hawk morph over the two hour limit because he hated his human life?
@@.-@ and 7
It’s actually been confirmed since the series ended that Marco was bi, so there’s that. It was hinted at throughout the series, but never outright gone into. Because… well, Scholastic middle grade books in the 90’s. Not even Harry Potter could get away with it.
That’s partly why I’d love to see this reimagined on a platform like Netflix. I’d love to see them free to do things like have a bi (or even gay) Marco.
@11 I read that, but frankly I don’t give a damn about post facto “Oh yeah, also!”-s.
That’s not representation. Rowling can sod off with her “Dumbledore was totally gay! What, show that in the new movies in some way? No no no, that might hurt ticket sales!” as well.
Sorry, I’m just a little salty about this; it always feels like people are trying to have their cake and eat it as well.
@12 I get that, I do. But again: 90’s lol. The series was almost over when shows like Buffy were just barely getting away with sneaking lesbian romances in, and still fighting to be allowed to air a lesbian kiss between main characters. We just weren’t there yet.
@10 I thought Tobias was stuck in a cage or something and couldn’t shift back without being squashed… I might be misremembering, it’s been *coughcough* years. I do recall him getting the option to shift back to human form later through timey-wimey alien-letting-him-touch-his-old-self antics.
Cassie was my favorite. ;_; I never finished the series! They were technically my brother’s books, and we must have stopped buying them and moved on to older things before the end. Rachel dies!? D:
I really enjoyed Animorphs too. It was a great combination of realistic characters, deep issues, interesting (and sometimes terrifying) aliens, and a complex morphing power system. Watching them “collect” new animals to become never got old. I wish I’d been able to read the whole series at the time. I don’t think my library had them all.
Umm… Y’all should check out Adrian Tchaikovsky’s new “Echoes of the Fall” series. It’s pretty much exactly this.
This headline in my email made me say out loud in my office “WHAT ABOUT THE ANIMORPHS???” because I thought maybe THIS WAS THE MOMENT, they were finally getting the reboot they deserve!!!
But having an article at least talking about how much they deserve that is also awesome. :) Everyone has said all the good stuff about their darkness, their maturity, the ways they grapple with the concepts of children at war. BUT ALSO, the humor! I’ll never be over the one in which the Yeerks are susceptible to becoming addicted to oatmeal. But only the instant kind. And then, only the maple and ginger flavor.
Not to mention Ax and Cinnabons. (Or Ax and ANYTHING!) (One of the books came with a bookmark with a bite mark taken out of it, and the note <<Bookmarks are not to be eaten. Although they taste quite good.>> Oh, my Andalite fish-out-of-water friend . . . )
YES! It was sooooo good. My favourite books as a kid :-)
@@.-@
…Obviously we should also be examining their height, weight, foot size, left/right–handedness, hair color, dietary restrictions (health), dietary choices, religion, grades, location, left-brain/right-brain tendencies, income, politics, language patterns/slang, ADHD, IQ, etc. ad infinitum in order to decide if the kids were TRULY diverse.
…Or you could recognize that ‘diverse’ simply means “showing a great deal of variety” (MW) and not every variety possible :)
I found a ton of the books at a used book sale, and loved the series right away. Watched the TV series and played the video game. Great series!!!
Yes yes yes! I was sad when the re-release didn’t get through very many books. I found the series in 2008 and have loved it since.
BTW you should have mentioned Jaina Solo and Tahiri Veila And Tenel Ka Djo in the Young Jedi Knights and Junior Jedi Knights series for 90s female sci-fi heroines.
The David arc is something that still comes to mind once in a while. It was incredibly dark, and yet true to life.
I think I’d read in an interview somewhere that Applegate started the series because she thought it would be a cool way to get kids into nature by showing them what it’s like to be different animals. As a nature-loving and sci-fi/fantasy loving kid I was definitely obsessed, completely and totally obsessed, and the ideas and themes permeated my attempts at writing then and probably still do now to an extent. My friends were too, we used to pretend we were Animoprhs doing all kinds of adventures. I do love concepts that are so cool and all-encompassing and vivid that you just get totally sucked in. I still didn’t read them all, because I aged past their reading level far more quickly than the series finished. I went back and went through some of the later ones to satisfy myself as to what happened–getting through the basic reading level was a struggle for sure at that point, but the story had been such a huge influence on me as a child that I still enjoyed reading the ending. As a kid I had never twigged to the ghostwriting thing, and I remember feeling a little betrayed to have learned about it, though I get why it had to be done with that publishing format.
The format is not only a weird product of that time that didn’t age well–it’s also pricey. (Smart, Scholastic.) At 60+ books, plus a handful of the companion chronicles series, and at $5 a pop (the chronicles were even more), that’s more than a $300 investment to read the whole series! And $5 a pop for as short as each book is started to get annoying to me (and probably to my parents) once I got to where I could plow through one in less than an hour. Considering the lack of punches pulled in respect to the themes–which I did quite love–that the reading level remained pretty basic was kind of a weird mismatch, and may be part of why it would be difficult to bring it back now. You’d have to make compilation volumes, maybe, that approach the length of more standard novel sizes today, and if so it would awesome if we could cut out all of the “My name is Jake” filler that’s at the beginning of each one.
I lent my old beat up copies of the first few to my boss so he could let his (quite precocious) son try them out, but the kid apparently could not get into them, though he’d liked the Hunger Games. Wasn’t sure if it was just the cultural references he didn’t get (what’s a Sega?) or if he was already just way past the books in reading level, or maybe not everyone dreams of turning into animals.
It might not work as it is on the page today…but think of the possibilities for The Sharing and social media, dark web, message boards in general? Or continuous observation and both the animorphs and yeerks? While 90s nostalgia is great theres so much space in our world now that it could be updated
#4 Ax was neither male or female, although his “human” shape was male.
Yes yes yes!! ALL THIS. These were my favourite books as a kid, and I fairly recently revisited them as an adult, and was so pleased to discover that they absolutely hold up. The language/prose might be relatively simplistic, but the content is gutting, complex, morally ambiguous, and some of the darkest stuff I’ve ever read; I loved The Hunger Games, but Animorphs blows it out of the water. Omnibus reissues would be great (and would fit with the longer attention span YA readers have today), but I would kill a man for a Netflix TV series. The serialised format just works so well, with being able to depict long, slow character development & the psychological toll that a years-long war takes on these poor kids.
Although: “Animorph books came out quarterly”
I hate to be That Guy, but I’m just mentioning this correction because the truth is even more buckwild & impressive: during the height of the ghostwriting era, the books were actually coming out monthly. MONTHLY!! It’s bonkers.
My son loved these books. He was a precocious reader. so I usually vetted books to make sure the subject matter was ok for him to read. I enjoyed them so much, I read them right along with him so we could discuss the themes and plots. As I recall, they got even darker as they went along.
We discovered them when a friend gave us a lot of her son’s old chapter books in the early aughts. I then soured booksales, yardsales and eBay so we could get the entire set which included a Choose Your Own Adventure book and a parody called Veggiemorphs. We even found some VHS tapes of the Nickelodeon series, watched them once and dubbed them awful> We didn’t care about the cheesy special effects, if was the acting and scripts that were awful.
I would watch a TV show of these books.
@10 and @14 My memory of Tobias getting locked into his hawk form was that it saved his friends to do so, or maybe just Rachel. It was so long ago, I just don’t remember a lot about the books. As an adult reading the books, I thought locking Tobias into a hawk enabled the author(s) to show the love they had for each other without having to deal with all the squishy bits of teenage love in a Scholastic book. Which my son appreciated since he didn’t like all the mushy-kissy stuff.
A. Don’t forget about the video game.
B. They were coming out monthly at one point, and I vividly remember this because I would walk to the bookstore from my house once a month with the exact change I needed in hand, put it on the counter as I walked in, grabbed my book, let them scan it, and then walked out. They knew me that well. And I also remember when the price changed from $3.99 to $4.99 because I didn’t have the exact money but the store let me bring it in later so I could have my book.
C. Tobias and Rachel FOREVER.
D. Tobias was my hero. I connected with him so much because of his childhood. It was so much like my own in many ways, and I just felt for him. I knew what he was going through and seeing myself on the pages of that book was so eye-opening for me.
E. I started this series in sixth grade when it came out. I was the only person I new still reading it religiously as a sophomore in high school and I didn’t care that anyone who found out made fun of me. It was the best damn series. I still have every single one of them safely packed in a box, including the Megamorphs books, the Andalite Chronicles, and the Hork Bajir book as well.
Ahh… my childhood. I think this summer I’m going to re-read them all just for the sake of nostalgia.
I loved this series when I was young, and all its fanfiction. And it did handle very adult topics with just the right amount of gravity for a child to take it in and ponder it. And the longer it went on, the more grey it grew, stripping away the easy black-and-white good-or-bad lines that seemed so clear in the beginning.
<<What is a cinnabon?>>, HA!
I loved this series growing up.
I have loved reading ever since I was a little kid. I was always looking at a book. My dad was an avid reader and I guess some of that transferred to me. This topics was extremely timely. I’d actually just looked at my ‘To Read’ list and thought I’d like to put Animorphs on there when I got done with it. I haven’t read it in years, and I’ve been wanting to re-read the whole series.
I loved animals and still do. I lived in the country and always wished I could transform in to animals and run around doing cool stuff. This series let me live that vicariously.
I think it’s funny that a lot of you said this book turned you onto Sci-Fi. While there are a lot of Sci-Fi shows that I like, I never really felt like I was a “fan” of Sci-Fi. I honestly didn’t even think about whether this series qualified or not, which it obviously does. I’ve got the same deal with the Pern series. I know they’re all from a technologically based planet and moved here to basically be Amish, but I always considered it more of a fantasy. I do enjoy the occasionally Sci-Fi book, but I can’t say it made me a fan.
In fact, the first “adult” book I read was Piers Anthony’s ‘Split Infinity’. My dad took me to a library book sale, where you picked out any books you wanted, they stacked them and measured the thickness of all the spines and charged you so many cents per inch. It was great and I frequented them religiously for years, until I started using my kindle. I found plenty of books to fall in love with there. That’s where I first discovered Terry Goodkind’s ‘Sword of Truth’ series.
Also, I totally identify with the poster who talked about the scholastic book fair. I didn’t discover how you can actually read books in order till after I started Animorphs, so I’d run into every fair and grab any cover whose picture I didn’t recognize. I had to beat the other kids who also read the series. Is there a better feeling than walking into a scholastic book fair, with a crisp $20 from your parents in your pocket. You get the 3-4 Animorphs you don’t have, and have enough left for a couple of book marks and a cool eraser?
I saw at least one poster talk about the lower reading level of the books. No, duh! These books were meant for kids. I bet you complain that your Big Mac isn’t medium rare, as well, don’t you. You gotta relax and take things as they are. No, they aren’t ‘Wheel of Time’, ‘Game of Thrones’, or even ‘Harry Potter’, but I guarantee that I really enjoyed reading them and I’d put money on it that I’d enjoy them again. I see too many people pigeon hole themselves. I had a cousin who stopped watching cartoons because he decided that he’d aged out of them. That’s extremely sad to me. I told him that he should continue watching them till he stopped enjoying them. It’s sad to deprive yourself of happiness because of how you think others will perceive you. I watch cartoons and enjoy them to this day. I don’t watch Dora the Explorer, because I don’t enjoy it, but you can bet your bottom dollar that I’d be recording it and watching it regularly if I did and forget anyone who made fun of me for it.
I saw other posters talk about vetting books for their kids. I guess I can see a little point to it, but for the most part I don’t agree. I mentioned the library book sales. I first went when I was 11yrs old. My dad loaded a basket for me with some of his favorites. I got ‘Split Infinity’, ‘A Spell for Chameleon’, ‘Jurassic Park’, ‘The Lost World’, a couple of Anne McCaffery’s ‘Pern’ novels, and a couple of others I’m sure I’m forgetting.
I got exposed to all kinds of things and it didn’t mess me up in the least. For instance, ‘Split Infinity’ is a split world where there is a magic version and an complementary science version. In the science version, personal power is shown through being able to legally wear clothes. All of the working class went around naked. I won’t deny that I was starting to notice girls at this point and it was a small thrill to read about them running around naked, but it’s also important to note that it was extremely tame compared to what I heard about at school or saw on the internet after I easily got around the pathetic attempt at a firewall. What it did, and what many books did, over the years is expand my mind. It introduced me to ideas, morals, and other character building traits that I tried to emulate. I think I became a better person because of many of the books I read. I could see what worked and didn’t work for characters. For example, I could see how lies often came back to bite you in the butt. In the case of the clothe less serfs in ‘Split Infinity’ I learned that nudity is not sexy. Think about it for a second. Seeing someone you like nude for the first time gives you a huge thrill. That fades some, the more times it happens. The reason is because you want to see something you’re not supposed to. A sexy little outfit is a thrill, because it gives you an almost glimpse of something that society says should be covered. So I’d be more inclined to hand a kid a book and then offer to answer any questions they had than to decide they couldn’t handle what was in it.
As for the diversity comments, the characters were all diverse. You not only had aliens that felt like aliens and not just humans in alien shape, but you had characters that were black, white, Hispanic, poor, middle class, etc… Having said that, it wouldn’t have bothered me if they weren’t diverse. To me, Cassie is the 3rd best character. The best character of all the humans, but come on, you can’t beat out a telepathic deer, who has a sword on his tail and loves cinnabons or a kid who gets to be a red-tailed hawk all the time. She was always my favorite human character, though, because she got to live on a farm with all these different wild animals and she was super skilled at morphing. I actually identified with her life more than any other character, even if I didn’t necessarily see myself as a young black girl. You’d think that with me being a white male, I’d have chosen Jake. I did put myself in his shoes plenty, since he was the leader, but I also put myself in the shoes of many of the other characters. I could put myself in the shoes of any of the gang and enjoy the story. That’s one of the things that makes Animorphs great. People need to quite worrying about who’s included and whose not. A show or book isn’t great because it’s represents every different group out there. It’s not bad if there isn’t a single character of color or non-traditional gender or sexual orientation. A story is bad, when you don’t care about the characters or what comes next. If you can’t put yourself into the story, regardless of whom the main character is, then find another story. You can’t please all the people all of the time and if you even attempt to, you face derision and self-destruction. So I say, heck with it. Write a good story and worry about the people who do like it. It burns me up that people are so sensitive and pitch a fit if things aren’t exactly like they want them. I wouldn’t have cared if Marco was bi or gay. I wouldn’t have identified as easily with him, but he’d still be a great character. I think with the morphing, it would have been a great way to talk about transgender, but it doesn’t hurt my feelings one bit that it wasn’t. Authors and writers don’t owe anyone anything. They’re writing the story they want to write and whomever likes it does, and if you don’t you don’t, but it doesn’t obligate them to you and you shouldn’t be offended if you don’t think the cast is diverse enough.
I totally loved the series, though. I’m probably going to read it as soon as I finish with the back half of RA Salvatore’s ‘Drizzt’ novels. Everyone remember, read what you enjoy, don’t bitch about what you don’t, and don’t let anyone tell you what you should or shouldn’t find joy in. Peace out!
@25: not true. The series established male and female for andalites and Ax, Elfangor, and Alloren(sp? The host of Visser 3) were established as male.
Ax was male, but his human morph was androgynous, comprised of DNA samples from Cassie, Rachel, Marco, and Jake.
Tobias was trapped in hawk form because he couldn’t escape the Yeerk pool, and it was always left open ended if this was an accident or not. Tobias had a pretty terrible life as a human.
@@.-@ I can’t tell if your comment is satire. If it is not, what more do you expect from a children’s series from the 1990s? Sure they could have done more, but Animorphs was not the most cishet piece of 90s pop culture. They did explore gender and sexuality a little bit. Marco morphs into a woman (the fictional governor of California). Marco actually expresses being attracted to boys in the books and flirts with them. There are also Gafinilan and Meril, the gay Andalite couple. And Tobias has been read by many AniFans as an allegory for being transgender. Sure, it would have been great if there were actually transgender characters in the series, but at least Applegate and Grant take advantage of the science fiction scenario to explore dysphoria.
Oh, sweet nostalgia. I think every book report I ever did in high school was on the Animorphs, to the point where my teacher told me to read something else. I still have all of them safely tucked under my bed, except the Ellimist Chronicles, which seemed to have never made it to NZ. I think I must’ve read the whole series multiple times. It always bugged me that there were fewer Tobias and Ax books as they were my favourite characters (but, the piles of fanfiction people wrote sort of made up for that). And I might’ve had a crush on Elfangor at one point.
i actually wrote a script that works with this generation of technology. But I don’t have the funds to make it into reality. I know that if I can get something on film someone would pick it up almost immediately
I loved this series so much as a kid. My library never bought most of the special books, though I did get to read the Ellimist Chronicles, and they skipped most of the books in the last third of the series. I didn’t have much in the way of allowance, so I started reading the new books when we would go to the grocery store or Walmart. Walmart is actually where I read the series finale, so there I was, probably twelve or so, trying to fight the urge to bawl in front of strangers in the middle of Walmart’s book section.
I actually have an Animorphs Reboot series on AO3 if anyone wants to check it out. I’d add a link, but I tried that earlier and the comment got deleted. It’s on-topic, though I guess technically I might be spamming AO3… oh well, see if this one stays up. I would love to be able to actually publish this reboot, but unless someone knows people at Scholastic… sigh.
Anyway, Google “Animorphs Reboot” and you should find my fan fiction. The first book, #01 The Fallen, is finished and I’m nearly done with #02: The Rescue.
@37
I have never liked fan fiction at all.. but for some reason (nostalgia? finding out the books were ghost written and not the unique creation of one author anyway?) I want to check out yours. I loved me some Animorphs as a kid. Definitely my literary gateway to Sci Fi, though I loved TNG and other TV/movies properties. It would be AWESOME to see a Netflix version.
@38. Mike
I’m going to try to put up the image and see if that works without the link to AO3.
My son and I read these together when he was in middle school, and talked about them endlessly. Great series. Would love to see a reboot (if done well).
One nitpick: Tobias does eventually regain the ability to morph, so he doesn’t have to be a hawk for the rest of his life. But it’s in reverse: He can morph to human, but if he stays human he’ll lose the ability to morph. So he opts to keep the hawk as his primary form so he can still help in the fight.
@37: YOU! You’re the guy! I found your stories sometime early in the year, I’ve been checking for updates to The Rescue pretty much every day my phone has data! Keep it up, you’re doing an amazing job!
I loved Animorphs, though I never reached the end, and Rachel was my favorite character! Would definitely watch a rebooted TV series and/or movie.
@32, androgynous but still male – Ax himself states right after morphing to human for the first time, “I chose to be male because I am male”. His human morph is often described as being “disturbingly pretty for a boy”, though.
I too loved Animorphs and religiously collected the books as they came out. I lost interest somewhat during the ghost-written period (between books 25-50) but came back for the finalé, and always enjoyed the spin-offs which focused on characters like Vissers One and Three, the Hork-Bajir and the Ellimist. The decision to produce a live-action TV series in the 90s was…. perplexing, to say the least – surely animation was a much better fit for a series with so many alien races and special effects? And not just Star Trek style humans with rubber foreheads either – part of the appeal of Applegate’s worldbuilding was how alien her aliens were. Telepathic blue centaurs with scorpion tails and no mouths? Dragon/lizard-like bipeds with sharp bladed arms, but they’re vegetarians? Not to mention the nightmare-inducing Taxxons, man-sized centipedes with insatiable cannibalistic hunger.
The series is quite firmly “of its time”; even without the dated 90s pop culture references (which were ham-handedly swapped out for dated 2000s pop culture references when the series was briefly relaunched a few years ago) it’s hard to imagine the Yeerks’ infiltration plot working quite as well in this era of cameras in every pocket and instant worldwide communication. But it’s not a hard barrier for re-reading, in the same way that I can still enjoy films and TV made in the 90s without quibbling. For example, half of Buffy the Vampire Slayer‘s plots wouldn’t work nowadays, for the same reason.
I was never quite as into Animorphs as my younger brother, probably because I was a little old for them at the time (older than the intended audience, anyway), and also because my reading level was past the level at which they were written (maybe I was ready for more challenging material?). I didn’t feel the need to read all of them–my brother would fill me in on any important developments I missed if I asked. That, and even being as voracious a reader as I was, I just didn’t have time to read all the books I wanted to. Plus, I was already a fan of science fiction when I started reading them (I was raised on Star Trek: TNG), so they weren’t the revelation to me that they clearly were to others.
I do have to admit, my feelings towards the series have been somewhat tainted. I never liked how it ended, for one. It’s not that I need a happy ending, or even an unambiguous one; there was just something about the last book that kind of ruined the experience. Too much time has passed for me to be more specific, but the point is, the series ended on a sour note for me, and that’s what ended up sticking with me.
My feelings about it were further tainted by one of the authors making an arse of himself on an online forum. I wish I could specify when, what forum, and what was said exactly, but again, a lot of time has passed since this occurred. If my memory is to be trusted, it boiled down to something along the lines of, “I am a bestselling author, and therefore my opinion is more valid than yours.” I wasn’t personally involved in the exchange and only read the transcript after the fact, but it left a lasting impression, and not a good one.
If someone could find a record of the conversation I’m referring to, that’d be great, because I searched and I haven’t been able to find it, and I hate mentioning something like this without having hard evidence to back it up, as without a transcript or other proof that it actually happened it’s just hearsay. If anybody else remembers this or can lend credence to it, I’d feel better about it.
For the record, I’m not saying, “Oh, the author’s a jerk, so you shouldn’t read or enjoy his/her books.” What I’m saying is, I witnessed an author behaving badly, and it has colored my opinion of his written work. I may be the only person who feels that way, I have no idea. I’m not trying to impose my opinion on anyone (I hope that’s clear), I’m just saying, this is how I feel about it, for better or worse.
A little late, but I just have to say how much I enjoyed this article. It nailed exactly how Animorphs resonated for me. [And the Winds of Winter dig stung exquisitely!] Thank you for such a great read!
Possibly what would work best would be a Netflix series that was set in the ‘90s. I’m thinking one that’s updated to make full advantage of the less coy attitudes of modern society about everything, not just gender-politics. Yet one that targets the ‘90s nostalgia like Stranger Things does for the ‘80s.
Possibly with hints that Trump is a Yeerk. Just sayin’.
Also, when I came across this my first thought was “this is Manimal meets Invasion of the Body’s Snatchers!” Anyone else? Not to say that this was a *bad* thing…
@44/Denise L. I hear you. Sometimes meeting an author or hearing about the things they’ve done can give added depth to their work – Iain M Banks, Neil Gaiman, Terry Pratchett, etc. Other times it does taint (and I think you found the precise word to describe the feeling) the author’s work – Orson Scott Card immediately springs to mind. Anne Rice. Any author who comes across as offended that they inspire fanfic instead of complimented (complimented and freaked out aren’t mutually exclusive – some fanfic is creepy). And then, for me, there’s Jeff Noon. He’s never done anything *wrong* (as far as I know), but shortly after he won the Arthur C. Clark award (and I’d read a copy of his debut novel) I went to see (live) an author’s interview with him. Dawkin’s Beard, the man in person was annoying. Now if I even pick up a book I hear his nasal voice in my head intoning “I like to think of myself as in the Interface between-” insert some kind of metaphor for whatever the question was about and something else. He used the phrase (or a slight variation) for almost every question asked <shudder>.
And I’m wondering what’s behind all the moderated answers – more links to their own fanfic?
i was born in dec of 91 grew up reading and loving these books this was one of the first series that got me into reading in general and over the years i lost my collection of books or had to give them away to library to make room but been starting to reaquire them on kindle app on amazon and rekindling something from my childhood one of the few good memories from it :) regardless i too over time have checked up on this series on the net and i agree it does deserve a reboot the show they did back in the 90s was ok but it had the limitations of things back then and i agree with todays stuff this would be good show and if not a show something to help revive this series but in the end it will allways be a classic and treasured series of mine as well as others :)
and also yes this article hit it all on the nail for me and for how i feel :)
Speaking of moral ambiguity anyone remember #19 the Departure where Cassie gets to know a Yeerk one on one?
Netflix would work more, choose your own release dates, bigger budgets and more creative freedom. It’s a “kids” series, but it has a deep adult meaning to it, and a lot of people can relate to it, because they are normal kids dealing with extraordinary events. It’s like Spider-Man. He’s seen as this massive hero to the world, but he’s a kid that deals with everyday issues, like will he be able to afford his lunch, being bullied.. ect.
That’s the issues these kids had to deal with daily, it’s not like they could just pick up and go off to battle and no one would worry about them. They always had to make sure they were taken care of, in a result from their parents perspective. Meaning, they wouldn’t be missed. One of the things I never resignated with, is the fact that shows like Power Rangers, they have the kids travel off into space, leave high school for a long period of time, or disappear all the time and their parents never seem to care.
There’s never a question about where they go, why they come back so stressed out, or anything that they do for that matter. Animorphs grounds this in reality, because they all have families/well most of their families care about where they go and what they do. Tobias said he chose to be a Hawk, because he hated his human life. Ax is a male character, because it’s been stated that there are two sexes for that race.
While I want a show like this or a movie, my biggest fear is that they’ll be focusing too hard on the effects, and not the characters/and their story arcs. Their emotions, and everything that goes on. I believe, this show could be perfect and could exist in an modern era. look on how many things have gotten rebooted that we thought were never going to get rebooted again?
Boy Meets World. Will and Grace. Star Wars. Jurassic Park. Ect. This is the perfect time to bring this out. With all the conspiracy and ancient alien/alien type shows that are out, people would love this. Stranger Things.. ect. The X-Files came back with a reboot, so why not this series? It can happen if it’s a good balance between effects/ the characters and their story. This is more of an adult book series, catered to kids. It needs to have an adult feel, I don’t want this to fall into the branded kid series trap and have it tamed down.
It needs to be more mature, because it focuses and deals on mature issues. I never really viewed this as a kids series myself, even if it’s in that bracket. There are times where I forget entirely they are even kids, with the situations and the emotions that are coming out because of all that. That’s what the movie needs to do, be mature and dark enough that it stays true to the books, but not so dark that a wide broad audience can’t still enjoy it.
I doubt it’ll be made, because it’s a series of books, and it’s a lot of ground to cover, but it’d be a nice idea if it did.
I was exposed to these when my daughter read them as a teen. I enjoyed them. Netflix did Lost in Space…so who knows…maybe they’ll do Animorphs. That would be great.
NETFLIX, yes please! I’ve spent A LOT of time over the last few years trying to imagine what this show could be like as a trilogy, whether as a movie or as books, since that seems to be how we take our stories these days (oh, or maybe 7 books to fit in more of the stories, a la Harry Potter!) But a 3 season netflix show would be the best thing – Modeled off of Avatar, the last airbender. That show is PERFECT, in the sense that each episode told a story, beginning, middle, and end, and yet, always worked towards the bigger battle against the fire lord. And while the story goes on in comic form, there was no “hey, let’s stretch out our planned season 3 into two seasons!”. Of all the episodes, only 1 is truly skippable, and the show makes fun of that itself in the penultimate episode!
With Netflix relaunching a darker Sabrina the Teenage witch show, i think Animorphs could SO be the next story. I love it, i will always love it!
A few artists are trying! They’ve pitched it to Scholastic and Netflix so far!
https://fablesiegel.wixsite.com/animorphspitch
@58
That pitch looks so good! Pleeeease Netflix, my 10 year old and all her friends would eat it up.
my friends!
I have discovered this mecca of all Animorphs books including the megamorphs and various “Chronicles”
The link below is specifically in their release order!
http://animorphsforum.com/ebooks/order.php
P.S.–> This made me rediscover Everworld again as well. No sleep here for the next week!
@crane I’m not against more LGBT representation in fiction. That said, the Animorphs cast was perfect. You got two Jewish kids, you got one white kid, you got a black kid, and you got the Latino, plus a literal alien. I hate to say it, but the LGBT community is not the majority compared to cis-het people. Especially in the 1990s, where being open to exploring your identity, including your sexual/gender identity, wasn’t quite as discussed as today. Might as well have been the dark ages. You really can’t expect five kids to have one person among them who’s gay or trans or bi or “willing to experiment,” the latter of which is because they don’t really show sex scenes at ALL in the series past teenage snogging, and that’s it. They also mentioned gay people, and how we need to accept them, I think twice? So come on, don’t be greedy. Animorphs was a wonderful piece of fiction that, sadly, was still trapped in the 1990s. Same way Jadzia Dax could never date women, even though she was pretty much a walking trans/bi allegory. There is literally no damned shame in the fact all six were straight, period. Though I often get quite confused as to why Animorphs seems to draw such a yuuuuuuge percentage of LGBT readers to it. I mean, as I said, I’d love more LGBT representation in popular media and further normalization into the mainstream collective consciousness, but that said, I’m as lily-white privileged as they come, and pure cis-het. I couldn’t stop looking at women if I tried, despite the kinks I’m into, so… I don’t get it. Really. It’s because of all the shapeshifting, isn’t it? As a final note, please don’t compare Animorphs to Harry Potter. The former completely blows the latter out of the water, and it’s a bloody shame Harry Potter got all the recognition Animorphs should have.
I also want to add, Marco being “bi” was a throwaway, “okay, sure, let’s run with that, if you think so, feel free to headcanon it” from Michael Grant, and not KA Applegate. I know. I read the tweet it came from. Marco is not bi. He couldn’t be if he tried. He’s like me, looking at the ladies and dreaming, dreaming, dreaming so hard… ahem. But still, if people are gonna discuss “Marco being bi,” he really isn’t. The sad truth of the canon is that Marco is as straight as an arrow. Again, I gotta repeat, don’t get greedy, guys. This isn’t like with Lando, who only briefly flirted with Leia, and then never showed off his “Calrissian Charm” past that. You could make the claim he is pansexual more than Marco, given how often he’s ogling girls. No. Please don’t do this. If Animorphs returns, I don’t want Marco being bi… it would ruin his character.
Bunz. Bunzzzzz. Bunzzzzzzzzzz.
Netflix should not reboot this, but rather…they should continue from the cliffhanger ending of the series. Seriously, how are we ever gonna find out how The One pulled a John Carpenter on all those Kelbrids? Plus the way The One was described made the Yeerks and even Krayak seem rather tame by comparison.