Animorphs

Animorphs #1-54

by K.A. Applegate, Katherine Applegate

Animorphs "RM" is an exciting series for young adult readers about five teens who are given the power to "morph" into any animal they touch and then to absorb its DNA. This power is granted them by a dying Andalite alien named Elfangor, who also warns the teens that Earth is being threatened secretly by a group of aliens called Yeerks. This high-interest series is currently a successful television show and will be sure to intrigue even the most reluctant readers.

Genres: Science Fiction, Fiction, Young Adult, Childrens, Fantasy, Middle Grade, Animals

8245 pages, Paperback

First published January 1, 1997

About the author

also published under the name Katherine Applegate

Reviews

[Latonya · Rating 5 out of 5]

(Spoiler-free review)

In my life, there have only ever been two book series where I spent my time impatiently awaiting the release of the next installation. This was one of them. I grew up being absolutely obsessed with this series. I was there right from the beginning along with several of my friends. Whenever a new book came out, we were there that day to buy it and we usually devoured it in one or two sittings and then spend the next month talking about it, all the way up until the release of the next book.

When the series finally came to an end, I remember wishing that it could go on (the cliffhanger in the last book certainly didn't help things) and that I, too, could be a member of the Animorphs. (Oh, the days I spent wishing I could find one of those blue morphing cubes.)

Then, after graduating college, I decided to go back and reread the series for fun and to see if it still held up. I'd been disappointed that The Chronicles of Narnia had, sadly, not (see my review), and was prepared to face the same letdown all over again.

That didn't happen. I reread every last book, including The Andalite Chronicles, all Megamorphs books, and the others, and loved it as much as an adult as I did as a kid. What I think makes the series stand up better than other children's series is that Applegate never talked down to her audience. She even dealt with difficult subject matter like the brutality of war and didn't sugarcoat anything, something I appreciated as a kid and, later on, as an adult.

Applegate also had a real knack for creating vivid, relatable, complex, and dynamic characters. For example, Marco begins with the singular trait of being the sarcastic jokester of the group, who often tried to make light of things during serious situations, much to the chagrin of the rest of the Animorphs. Yet, as the series continues and we get more of each character's backstory, we learn why he behaves this way. We learn that he sees he has two choices when things get serious: focus on the negative and feel overwhelmed and hopeless, or try to make things seem like they aren't so bad with humor. As another example, Rachel, who contrasts with Marco and is thus a rival to him, begins the series being described as super-model material with a huge love for malls and shopping...and a good fight. However, as the series goes on, Rachel discovers that she really loves the fight and it gets to the point where she feels intense bloodlust, which worries her friends. When she sees how worried they are, she begins to worry herself and spends time conflicted over her own nature.

I could talk about all the other characters, too, but we'd be here all day. I could also talk about the many themes that Applegate explores, but I think that I'll save that for a blog post.

This should, however, stand as a testament to why the series works so well and why it developed such a devoted fan base throughout its run. It was exciting, emotional, action-packed, and original...and didn't shy away from dealing with serious topics. It treated its readers as intelligent and mature, not as fragile little creatures too sensitive and innocent to be able to handle anything more serious than, I don't know, magical fairy gardens and a bad day at school—not that there is anything wrong with those books. They have their place, but it would be nice to see junior-level books that treat their audience with a little more intelligence.

Of course, the series won't be for everyone. It can get very violent and, for a children's series, pretty graphic. Limbs get torn off (but, in the case of the Animorphs, as long as they morph back into their own bodies, they'll be fine), blood spills, and guts get strewn about. If I were to rate it, I'd say the violence is very borderline PG/PG-13. It is, however, not violence for the sake of violence and serves as a powerful illustration of the consequences and brutality of war.

All that said, Animorphs is a fantastic series and I can do nothing but highly recommend it. It is currently being reprinted, complete with brand new covers, and I am hopeful that kids today will pick it up and get sucked into it and love it like just like my friends and I did.

[Corytregoart · Rating 5 out of 5]

It's easy to look at the premise of this book--pre/teens transform into animals to fight alien invaders--and scoff, or write it off as juvenile nonsense. However, in doing so you'd be dismissing what is actually a very deep and rewarding series of books, a series that has the utmost respect for its audience.

Firstly, there's the aliens. Far from generic bug-eyed monster, each race has a distinct ethos and biology, with their own culture, traditions, life cycles, idiosyncrasies, and prejudices, explained and elaborated upon in depth over the course of the series. The aliens in Animorphs compare favorably to some of the best aliens I've encountered in "real" adult science fiction. They're all vividly described as well, firing the imagination and providing endless inspiration for artistic types such as myself. And new species were introduced regularly throughout the series; every single book at times, especially when Visser Three's around to transform into one of his endboss morphs.

One thing I really liked about the aliens is that their powers (with a couple obvious exceptions) were always limited. Neither the Yeerks nor the Andalites had endless forces of troops and super-weapons at their disposal. Their resources were always limited, so they had to use strategy. That's one of the things that made the series so interesting.

But more so than its interesting aliens or military strategies, what really sets Animorphs apart is the respect it had for the intelligence and emotional resilience of its young audience. My intelligence was never insulted while reading these books. They were never dumbed down. The characters and situations were complex. The villains had their own motives and ambitions that could be understood and even sympathized with. None of the heroes were without flaw. There was hardship, suffering, and tragedy. Near the end of the series, all of the protagonists bear the psychological scars of their long struggle.

[The Scarecrow · Rating 5 out of 5]

I read all of these on PDF files I stole from the internet, since a 54-book series is expensive to buy in one sitting and impossible to find in completion at my local libraries. Believe me, I tried. It took me about three days to finish the lot, mostly because they're easy to read, but also because for 90% of the books the first few chapters are a generic introduction to the series. Why Applegate felt the need to do this is beyond me. When you read the books one after the other it just comes off as formulaic and tedious, which is exactly the opposite of the story and characters.

I know the final volume has been getting a lot of slack which is perfectly understandable. Applegate seems to think this is because she gave us a realistic ending, but it's really because she introduces a completely new and unresolved plot about twenty pages into the volume. Ouch. I found the ending to be fine enough in a very Nolan-esque way, but I can see what all the hoopla is about. I formed my own ideas about what I think happened in the end and I'm satisfied with that. I think that level of ambiguity is quite trusting of an author and rewarding for a reader.

Book 22 is my favourite volume (tough pick, but hey), since it both terrified me and underscored the fact that Rachel's true strength lay in her willpower. It is also probably one of the best written volumes in the series. Books 13, 30, 33 and 49 are also fantastic.

The whole series, however, is fully worth a read and I wholeheartedly recommend it.

(This is an abridged review. The rest is at my blog.)

[Shar · Rating 5 out of 5]

despite how long this series ran and how many books fit into its canon, there's not many people i know who picked these up as kids like i did, and most scoff at the premise now. it's easy to, what with the silly covers and the plot revolving around teenagers who can turn into animals to fight off an alien invasion. what is overlooked, however, are the mature and at times very dark themes that run throughout the series - PTSD, depression, torture, dehumanization, moral ambiguity, death, loss of innocence and the gruesome violence of war to name a few. KA applegate doesn't shy away from addressing any of these, even at times touching upon racism, ableism, and homosexuality. the lines between good and bad start out clear but start to venture more into the greys as the protagonists interact more with the other side and begin to have to question their own choices -- and then follow through with some very tough ones -- and the series never lets you stop and think for a second that either side is completely correct in their actions.

what i appreciate about this series, even as an adult having done a re-read, is that even though the target demographic is children, KA's writing never talks down to the reader. sure there are cheesy and very simplistic moments, considering the audience and this *is* set in the 90s, but there are just as many poignant moments both from the main protagonists -- including their closest alien companion ax who makes some very interesting and astute observations about humanity as an outsider -- as well as secondary characters and villains. with each book being from a different perspective, we get to know each character individually along with their specific struggles. because of this format, all the characters are fleshed out wonderfully with very distinct voices and personalities, and we get to see so many different sides to them. for me personally, i deeply appreciate how diverse the group is, with two intricately characterized females, as well as two people of color (including one of the girls). the prominent female voices, along with other factors in the series, makes this a very feminist series (demonstrated most explicitly by my favorite, rachel who will never shy away from telling you how feminist she is).

but besides all of that, and though many of the ghost written books were unnecessary and as with any series this one has its own set of flaws, a series as long as this one allows for an extremely rich world to be painted. what with several companion books revolving around alien characters who make brief appearances throughout the main installments and their backstories, along with the main series, as well as an actual main character who is not human, we get to explore beings, races, sometimes entire worlds that are completely alien and most of the time not humanoid in the slightest. it's so vibrant and lush, with tons of detail to sink into. it's also absolutely worth a mention that along with the darkness and details, there's equal amounts of humor (PLENTY of it) and touching moments, along with some of my favorite literary relationships ever. animorphs may not be your thing now (maybe because of the length of the series or the premise or the writing or maybe you're just too old etc) but it's certainly something i am eternally grateful for noticing that one day on my scholastic book fair order form in fourth grade and i look forward to revisiting and giving it another spin someday.

[Nicki · Rating 5 out of 5]

I don't know how to express how much this book series changed my life. It's almost impossible to describe. When I first started reading avidly, around age six, I just couldn't really get into a book series. I'd read a book, but I wouldn't think about it again afterward. Then I found Animorphs. And I fell in love. I read, and I read, and then I'd read the books over again. I became obsessed with the lives of the characters, and determined to find out how their stories would end. Over the course of ten years, I collected the entire series.

I got my first Animorphs book when I was seven, and I got my last when I was seventeen. I have all 54 books, the alternamorphs, the specials. I have two of the videos, the book about the cast, etc. I love this book series so much. It follows a group of five kids and their alien friend. But what I really liked is that Applegate didn't treat me like a kid. Her stories progressed in maturity as I did. And by the end, I was so absorbed. I cried when Rachel went evil, and when she died , and at the ending.

I understand a lot of people are upset about the ending, and it wasn't my favorite. But I actually liked the ambiguity. It kind of made me happy knowing that Jake didn't end up a depressed hobo, and Marco, a movie star. It just wasn't them, you know? I liked the idea of them continuing to fight the good fight. And it was a good fight.

[Paige · Rating 5 out of 5]

I was eight years old when I read my first Animorphs book. Animorphs was the first science fiction series I ever read, and (let’s see) seventeen years later, it’s still one of the best. I know a lot of people my age say that Harry Potter was the series that shaped their childhood, but for me Animorphs was that formative series.

Animorphs pretty literally shaped how I view the world. It starts with a very black and white kind of world and then it slowly breaks that apart. It’s the kind of series that forces you to grow up with the MCs. It disguises this morality in extremely cool depictions of flying, amusing and occasionally silly tangents, and fights scene against a big bad who is incredibly easy to hate. But then suddenly, you’re nine years old and reading about a kid with the power to morph about to sell the gang out to the yeerks and asking what would I do here? What could I do? You’re watching a character be tortured for the good of the mission. Watching a kid coldly plot the death of his own mother because she’s housing the enemy. And you watch the Animorphs make compromises, make impossible choices and you watch them change and you wonder.

For all that there are silly stand-alone novels, this series stands out from other kids series because every action has very real ramifications (we’re literally not even done with book one before a character is permanently stuck as a bird). Nearly every thread has major ties to the end game and while I don’t like all of them (*cough*Ellimist*cough*), it’s so very rare to see a series this long with a definite plan.

This is not a perfect series. It suffers a little from the ghost-writing (the 30s on the whole, are rough) and it’s probably too long by half. But even the down books have moments like Marco’s endless snark at the Helmacrons:

You couldn’t go mano a mano with maggot and hope to win. And that’s sad, because a maggot has no manos.

Or the capstone in the #48 which was terrible until all of a sudden it wasn’t:

It would be hard to believe the entire fate of the planet depended on that girl.

A girl who wanted to do the right thing.

But who had no idea at all what it was.

[haha! That one’s in reference about if Rachel will do a mercy killing or not! Totally appropriate for an eight year old!]

I found myself frustrated with the optimist of the group, Cassie, a lot. But the most interesting part of that is the fact that when Cassie takes her massive risks, hope and optimism pay off. And that's a message that's beyond cool.

This is a series that manages to be darker than nearly all of adult literature I’ve read in the past decade. It’s a war story about child soldiers. It’s about morally gray spaces and shattered misconceptions and the way constant fight can break a person. But it's also about how making the hopeful, stupid choice isn't always wrong and how six kids can change the fate of an entire planet.

I can’t tell you how important this series is to me. This stupid kid’s series with the gimmicky covers and the flip-book corners. This series with parasitic alien invaders who are fought by shape shifters. This series that managed to slip into my eight year old brain and shape the way I think. This series that deals with the horrors of war, and never hits the reset button, but has such a sense of humor that you can’t help but smile.

Cassie, everyone here has problems. Ax is the only member of his species within a trillion miles who’s not a Controller; you’re a pacifist who spends half her time battling aliens; Jake is just a dumb jock trying to play General Eisenhower; Rachel is about three millimeters away from morphing permanently into the Terminator; and, oh, by the way, Tobias is a bird who lives in a tree and eats mice for breakfast.

Seriously guys. They take like thirty minutes each to read. The dialogue is great. The action sequences are awesome. The stories are a really screwball mix of fun and soul-crushing and Animorphs is pretty much the best gateway to science fiction you could ever hand a kid.

[Vince Snow · Rating 5 out of 5]

ReRead in 2017. Was surprised and impressed how well the books held up. After starting I quickly realized there was much more to the story than a few kids turning into animals. The story delves into complex moral issues and lets the reader decide the 'right' thing was. Loss of innocence, life and death, free will, war, depression, family, loyalty.

I enjoyed different books this read through than I had when I read through the series more than ten years ago.

Couldn't recommend the series highly enough.

[Andrew Ball · Rating 5 out of 5]

If you grew up in the 90s-00s and didn't read the Animorphs, you missed out!

[Rachelann]

I remember reading a lot of these as a kid. I can't believe there's 54 books. -.-'

[Arimo · Rating 3 out of 5]

Animorphs is a 54-part series of youth books that many people from my generation remember seeing in the library. Many friends I've talked to remember the book covers where the main characters morph into different animals, but very few ever read the books themselves.

I also never read any Animorphs books but I finally decided to read the books as an adult. Finishing the series as a kid would have been impossible anyway, as only the first 20 books in the series were ever translated to Finnish.

To make things a bit easier, I followed an Animorphs reading guide that categories the books into series into essential, recommended and skippable books. I read all of the essential books and most of the recommended books, and skipped or skimmed through the rest. In the end I read 30 of the main books and 4 out of ten spin-offs.

The basic premise of Animorphs is simple: It's a story about a group of teenagers who acquire the skill to morph into animals. However, it doesn't take long for the series to expand to different topics. After the beginning, the series leans more to scifi and ethical dilemmas about the morality of war.

The beginning of the series is great. No other stories have given me such clear ideas about animal cognition. The (mostly ghostwritten) middle part of the series varies in quality and drags a bit too long, but this also serves the plot. Near the end, the main characters really suffer from the psychological effects of prolonged fighting, and it is easy to understand what the characters have gone through.

I like the way the series manages to defy expectations. Instead of a black and white story about good and evil, the series' take on morality is much more complex. Series like Harry Potter, Narnia, Star and the Lord of the Rings seem more naive in comparison.

In many ways, Animorphs feels like a relic from a previous time. To me, it mostly resembles old long-form TV series like the X Files. Some episodes move the plot forward, but other are more self-contained or even feel like complete fillers. These days, a similar story would most likely be told in a more compact and focused format.

So, would I recommend the Animorphs series to anybody else? Probably not. Still, I'm glad I finally read the series.

[Jacob Gowans · Rating 5 out of 5]

I started reading this series back when I was in junior high. It finished when I was a freshman in college. This series is outstanding. I doubt many people allowed themselves to really get into a series that lasts almost 60 books, but the entire thing is phenomenal. It's a must read for anyone who wants to get a glimpse of what kids go through while fighting a war. KA Applegate didn't allow herself to compromise the truth for happy endings. These kids are fighting an overwhelming enemy, the Yeerks, and they are constantly beaten, set back, and worn down, but never give up. Are there times when you have to suspend disbelief a little bit? Yes, but rarely. KA Applegate's only fault is that some of the books feel like "filler episodes" in a TV series, but on a whole the series has a great linear progression that continues to expand on itself. I would love to see this series turned into a series of novels or movies someday.

[Talon Kartchner · Rating 5 out of 5]

I read every book in this series, including all the Megamorphs, Andalite Chronicles, Hork Bajur Chronicles, etc. I love this series! A way better alternative to the Goosebumps, in my opinion.

[Josh · Rating 5 out of 5]

Absolutely god tier series. Everyone who liked this series as a kid is antifa now, and we have KAA to thank for it. Well worth a reread as an adult.

[Vjustin · Rating 5 out of 5]

*** ALERT. MAY. CONTAIN. SPOILERS.***


A book I first saw when I was in elementary school in the Scholastic catalog. Incidentally, do those still exist? Anyway, I had read maybe the first 5 books, after which I read some random ones in the series. It wasn't until last year that I realized I had never finished the series nor bothered to even find out if it had an actual ending. So I set off to the library like any good bookworm and borrowed the books 10 at a time.

It's a series I think most people do not really look at. It's easy not to notice it; the series was never as big as Harry Potter. It starts out very cool actually. The whole 'superpowers' thing and aliens are real. Later on in the series however, it does get serious as they get into the war more and in the end, I actually felt quite lonely. I had always like Rachel in the book and to see that she was 'let go' and in the manner she went was actually very heartbreaking. I guess most of the questions that surround the book i.e do people ever find out, what about Marco's mom and the Animorphs families are answered.

I TRY to understand the author's reasons for the ending that it had even if part of me wishes it was a happily ever after. But even then, I loved the series. You see angst, love, war, BIG decisions. A very good read, but the series is a little long at 54 books. I've read most companion books which are good, you see the story from another character's POV besides the Animorphs.

[Sanguislibrarian · Rating 3 out of 5]

I've read literally this entire series from nine to thirteen and own the entire thing as well. Overall, I enjoyed it, though its simplistic at time and I didn't enjoy the ending. The 'David' miniseries I disliked, I didn't like the last four books and I didn't like the way the ending was handled. After the kids are discovered to be human the enjoyment in the series went down for me, as it did when I got older and began to see the repetitive formula. It could have been cut in half and been equally as good, because some of the books in latter half of the series were ghostwritten and suffer for it.

HOWEVER, all of that being said, they really formed a huge part of what I read growing up and I can see how some of what I like today can be found in this series. I love fantasy and sci-fi stories supposedly set on earth. The 'this is happening' is definitely something I enjoyed. This was also the first fantasy/scifi series I read where what the heroes did impacted them. The kids are plague by nightmares and nausea, and serious paranoia, due to their role in the secret war. I enjoyed one of the , such as the Hork-Bajir one about Aldrea that spoke of the earlier parts of the war, the most of all of the books.

All in all, I'm not sad I read it, though I am a bit embarrassed to admit I own the whole thing. It was a big part of my childhood, though.

[Amanda]

Animorphs was the first book series I really got into as a kid. I discovered them at my elementary school library; they occupied an entire shelf, and were not marked with the dreaded red sticker which separated the more "mature" books from the ones that had been deemed suitable for all ages. (For comparison, Applegate's Remnants series was housed on the next shelf but had the sticker; when I became old enough, I went after those on the basis of having loved Animorphs and was quite disturbed and put off by what I read. But I'll save that story for another time.) So I was allowed to check out this series about teenagers getting involved in a massive interspecies war at the age when I was still reading the Magic Tree House, Goosebumps, and Junie B. Jones.

My memories of this series are in flashes. I didn't read all of the books, and what's more I read them out of order. The series had been over with for 5-6 years by the time I started reading, and I remember not really being surprised by the twists (having already had them spoiled) so much as I was intrigued.

I know the names of all the characters, their basic personality traits, and what I thought of them at the time. Tobias was my favorite, primarily because I was obsessed with the idea of a kid finding out their father was an alien. Looking back, his angst probably would have annoyed the shit out of me now. As a prelude to my love of weird alien characters like Spock, I also tended to prefer the books written by Ax; he was more successful as a comic relief character than Marco, whose character arc took a decidedly darker turn as the series progressed and their lives became more difficult. Rachel could be bitchy at times and I thought of her as a stereotype (there were so many stunningly beautiful fierce warrior blondes in 90s/early 2000s media that the trope was nearly as strong as the "dumb blonde") but I enjoyed her little romance with Tobias. In fact, I think they were the second couple I ever "shipped" after Lana and Clark in Smallville. Cassie and Jake were both boring to me (Jake lacked the pizzazz and style which sets other leader-types apart, and Cassie's main character trait was that she was nice, normal, and her parents being veterinarians meant that she could get them access to animals so they could absorb their DNA) and I didn't care about their relationship.

The books I remember most vividly were the weirder ones. There was the one where Cassie had to perform amateur brain surgery on Ax in a barn with carpentry tools, and he woke up in the middle of it screaming because they had put a sympathetic Yeerk in his head to help guide the procedure. Then there was the one where Cassie was infected by a Yeerk, the two had to work together to solve some problem, and at the end they gave the Yeerk the ability to morph; they turned into a caterpillar, then a butterfly. Or was that Cassie herself?

Tobias was contacted by a lawyer who claimed to have found his father's long-lost will. He went there to have it read, and had to sit there and pretend he thought it was all a cruel joke as the will revealed his father was Elfangor. The lawyer and somebody else there were infected, and if he showed any sign of knowing the truth already or believed it, his ass would've been grass.

There were a few time travel stories, one told by Marco where they went back to the Ice Age. The final scene had them back in the present, and Marco was taking the hottest shower he could. His father came in and asked if he wanted to go get ice cream, causing Marco to laugh his ass off.

I even read a Choose Your Adventure book where the reader was placed in the role of an extra unnamed Animorph. If you screwed up in your decisions, the others would force you to morph into a fly and then trap you that way, with a lifespan of only three days being the fate that awaited you for your mistakes. These books were so sick, I loved them.

At some point I read the last book. I went in knowing Rachel would die. I could predict it. And sure enough, she got rammed to death. Or was she impaled?

I look back on this series with mixed feelings. On the one hand, it was my introduction to "true" sci-fi. It had many concepts which fascinated me, and some memorable characters and moments. It was also horribly dated even five years later and reeked of Scholastic sensibilities in the worst way possible.

The writing style as I remember it was sparse and utilitarian, which fit with the concept of books written from the POV of a a bunch of 90s teenagers. The basic premise was fun and interesting, but only as long as you didn't go into too much depth trying to explain how the mechanics of it all worked.

And that's where I think this series started to fail. It went on for too long, tried to do too much, and as a result it started to show seam lines. The introduction of the Ellimist, a godlike cosmic being that essentially served as a deus ex machina and solved all/most of the intriguing obstacles they faced, particularly by doing away with the issue of Tobias getting stuck in his hawk form within a few days of getting the power to morph, annoyed me even as an eight year old. I wanted to see how these characters would win the war even when Tobias was trapped as a hawk forever. I was promised higher stakes, only for the author(s) to renege halfway through. That betrayal was worse than any stupid one-off story ever could be, because it held ramifications that affected everything in the series from then onward.

I don't want to start ranting. Since I want to become an author myself, I can still say this series taught me a valuable lesson about storytelling - one that has been beaten into me by the slow, drawn-out deaths of many of my other favorite IPs: Quit while you're ahead. Don't keep going just because you love money. Don't let the publisher convince you to keep going. Don't sign a contract that legally binds you to keep going. If you get to the point where you have to hire ghost writers to keep up the constant output demanded of you by the publishers and readers, then it's time to stop.

[Nicole · Rating 5 out of 5]

Okay, these books made my childhood! Too bad they had the worse ending of a series EVER! It was the first book I cried over, and I cried for days (give me a break, I was 11!). It didn't help that I was at camp in a cabin of non-readers, trying to explain why I was crying. Besides the end (which come on, did ANYONE like?) the series was one of the best for that age group. I have the urge to go back and read them all again now...

[Eskay Theaters & Smart Homes · Rating 4 out of 5]

Circa1998 Thanks to Scholastic, us 90s CBSE kids had the first Lit glimpse of american universe with cool characters, suburbia life, and inventive aliens! Waiting for every new book to arrive each month was one of the highlights of our school life.
In hindsight, Would say its a much better fictional universe to many other more popular (cough *HP* cough) series!

[Ellen · Rating 5 out of 5]

jesus

[M.M. Strawberry Library & Reviews · Rating 5 out of 5]

Weren't the late 90's just awesome? It seemed that everyone I knew had read at least one Animorphs book. Overall the story was engaging, and the covers were always a treat to look at.

[Dave Style · Rating 5 out of 5]

Una de las mejores series que me he leído, desde joven me encantó... 😌

[Laura · Rating 1 out of 5]

A Woman Who Hates Sci-Fi Reads All of Animorphs in a Journey That Took Over a Year and Felt Much Longer.

TL;DR: No.

I was going to actually qualify this with a “well, I don’t actually hate sci-fi” and I’m sure I could dig in the recesses of my brain and find examples of sci-fi books I have enjoyed but whatever, qualifications are lame and those are the exceptions that prove the rule, anyway. And not only do I (generally) hate sci-fi, I also hate space, aliens, high action, and plot-driven stories, and most children’s lit that I’m not nostalgic for has historically not received high ratings from me. I’m the kind of person who, once I jumped ship from children’s to YA and YA to adult, I didn’t really look back.

Typically, though, when I rate children’s media I’m not nostalgic for I’m a bit more lenient with it because I try to look at it from the perspective of what I would give it if child me had read it. Not in this case. Even as a kid, I leaned more towards quieter stories over action-heavy, pulpy sci-fi kidlit. I liked stories about kids and/or animals living their lives, mixed in with the occasional ghost story or mystery. I liked character-driven stories that dealt with real issues, and the closest I came to liking fantasy was Roald Dahl, particularly James and the Giant Peach, and Percy Jackson and the Olympians. In my teen years, I got into speculative fiction more, mostly dystopian and fantasy (the kind that got big on booktube circa 2015-2016), and now as an adult I read pretty much exclusively nonfiction and obscure-ish lit fic. When I do read genre, it’s usually Gothic or literary horror with the occasional gorefest to keep me on my toes. If child me had actually read an Animorphs book and not been vaguely put-off by the cheap-looking cover, she would have stopped after the first book, having sated her curiosity and moved on.

For a reader like me, Animorphs feels like a rock wall I have to hunt to find a foothold in, and some of the ones I thought were secure kept crumbling beneath my feet. Cool body horror with the morph scenes? They get repetitive fast. Surprisingly dark action? Nothing actually has stakes because this is a children’s series and also KA Applegate cannot write action. It is dark- for a kid’s book series- but also not really any darker than the final bloodbath of PJO or The Hunger Games as a whole, a series most popular now with elementary school students and I don’t really get why people hype up how fucked up Animorphs supposedly is when it just seems like the average level of violence in children’s speculative fiction. I mean, my own favorite series from my preteen and teen years was Unwind by Neal Shusterman, which is a dystopian series about teenagers having their organ harvested with their parents’ consent. Maybe things were different when it came out, though, or maybe I just nuked my brain reading too much transgressive fiction as an adult. Both answers are equally as plausible.

The gore isn’t even very effective, anyway. When the kids can just morph to heal any and all wounds, it feels cheap, and like Applegate missed the point of gore in the first place. This makes me sound like a sociopath, but it’s hard for me to cringe at the idea of a Rachel the bear getting eaten by ants or her arm ripped off for the 1000th time if ultimately she can just morph out of it and be perfectly fine. It doesn’t send me to the dark places in my mind that other depictions of gore in the books I’ve read do because there’s no consequences. As a result, the gore is never elevated beyond cheap shock value that grows progressively more and more dulled the more and more Applegate et al play out the same lame scenes over and over again. And so much of the gore with the actual consequence of death for the creature is alien-related, and because the aliens are so poorly described I can’t picture them so the visuals aren’t cool or interesting or even gross.

And then when I thought things couldn’t get any worst for me, time travel is introduced.

Do you know that Ray Bradbury story, “A Sound of Thunder”? With the time travel safari and the hunter who accidentally kills a prehistoric butterfly and now humanity is illiterate? And the message is an extremely heavy-handed “Even the smallest things can cause the biggest change”? The way time-travel is treated in these books is like that, but stupid, and every time it shows up I hate it more and more. Quite frankly, I have no idea why Applegate thought it was a good idea to introduce time travel unless she just wanted to compete with Magic Tree House, but she deserves prison for that alone. And if you actually like the depictions of time travel, you also deserve prison. I’m still not over Applegate randomly making Rachel Jewish just to make a point about the Holocaust. Oh, and also the only Black character being mentioned as owning a slave in the intro chapter of Megamorphs #3. What the actual fuck, woman.

And the writing. There’s no attempt at stylization. It’s like eating drywall. I get bored easily while reading, no matter how much confusing action is on the page, because there’s nothing that hooks my eye, no sentence that stands out or interesting imagery to stick in my brain. And honestly, even as a kid I would have been bored by it, I think, because I never liked children’s pulp fiction for that reason. Books like Magic Tree House, Animal Ark, Goosebumps, Bailey School Kids, all those long-running, ghostwritten Scholastic series just bored me out of my mind with their dry, workmanlike prose, especially when I could have been reading The Secret Garden or a Pamela Munoz Ryan book or being scared out of my wits by one of Mary Downing Hahn’s ghost stories. They always struck me as “reluctant reader” books, a reputation perhaps not helped by the fact that the only box sets of those series, namely Magic Tree House and Animal Ark, we owned growing up were the products of my mother circling anything my sister might find even remotely interesting in the Scholastic Book Fair catalog in an effort to convince her that reading is fun, damnit (it didn’t work). I’m not saying anything against “reluctant reader” books, but if you already learned at a young age that you enjoy reading in part because you like the way words sound when put together in certain ways, the whole “plot uber alles” mentality of “reluctant reader” books held little interest for child me, and, for adult me, even less. Applegate’s writing must have gone through a serious glow-up or the competition for the Newbury the year she won must have been completely nonexistent if this is any indication of her writing talent.

However, there are benefits to that. Namely, real books feel so much better after slogging through your required morph for the week. Take one of my favorite books of last year, Martin and John. I’m not saying it wouldn’t have been a favorite without morphs to lower the bar, but reading a book like that- a book that does interesting things with its structure, that crafts complex, realistic characters, that subtly imparts its themes and leaves you things to chew over after the book has ended, a book that sometimes make you stop and think “that’s a really interesting (in a good way) decision Dale Peck has made,” or “that’s a gorgeous line”- after three or four weeks of Animorphs feels like the greatest fucking thing ever written. You forget that there are people who actually know how to write and, not only that, are capable of doing it extremely well. That some people actually see literature as art and not just entertainment. This makes me sound like a very pretentious person and maybe I am but I also don’t really venture much outside my comfort zone of artsy, strange lit fiction and serious nonfiction so genre is like a whole new world to me and one I’ve also never been that interested in exploring so I have a hard time with the concept of turning my brain off to enjoy books. It’s why I’ve given almost every horror novel I’ve ever read a three or lower, and that’s a genre I claim to like.

Part of the issue with Animorphs is that it has an identity crisis. It doesn’t know what kind of series it wants to be. Is it a serious sci-fi epic about kids defending the human race from an alien invasion? A silly pulpy series about kids who can transform into animals? Episodic or serialized? What audience do the authors have in mind? This is an issue because every time the series gets serious, or tries to pull in Big Ideas and Themes, the whole thing is undercut by the fact that this is ultimately a series about kids who can transform into animals. Why are we taking this so seriously? I saw an interview with KA Applegate where she claimed that Animorphs was her way of expressing her anger about the US involvement in the Gulf War. Get over yourself, woman. You wrote Animorphs, not The Things They Carried. I’ll even accept a similar explanation from Suzanne Collins, because I could easily believe that series could come from a place of anger. But not Animorphs.

And because of the inherently stupid premise, the serious moments just don’t land with me. Tobias’ angst about being an emotionally neglected twelve year old boy, for instance, may have tugged at my heartstrings in another book series, but it’s ruined by the fact that he’s a fucking hawk, and so his tales of woe come across as unintentionally comic. Forbidden love is in general a trope I’m in favor of, but it’s so difficult to take his and Rachel’s angst about one of them being a girl and the other being a hawk seriously because one of them is a girl and the other is a hawk. That’s so dumb it’s funny.

And in other cases, the seriousness comes across as borderline-offensive. See: Applegate’s attempts at dragging in PTSD. See: Jake at one point comparing himself to his great-grandfather, who is said to be a veteran of WWII, you know, an actual fucking war where people actually died. Like I said earlier, I can accept something like that from The Hunger Games, because the stakes feel more, I don’t know, applicable? No one’s morphing into fucking animals in that series. It’s not about an alien invasion.

All of this is probably my issue with genre in the first place, but at the same time, I’ve read genre where I’ve been open to the author making commentary about the real through the lens of the unreal- most of the genre-adjacent works I’ve really loved do that and do that extremely well. I think ultimately, the seriousness of the subject matter or metaphor has to be balanced by the seriousness of the premise. Kids morphing into animals to fight off an alien invasion -> not a serious premise. The ghost of a dead girl haunting the family of the two girls who accidentally played a part in her death-> serious premise that can be used to then make commentary on intergenerational trauma and the sins of the fathers (Deep and Dark and Dangerous by Mary Hahn). The only way that could work (unserious premise -> serious subject matter) is if the book in question is an absurdist black comedy, which this absolutely is not. And maybe it’s because of that that the only really memorable Animorphs books, for me at least, leaned in to the inherent stupidity of the plot. Rachel’s croc book, where she has a morphing allergy that doubles as a metaphor for the awkwardness of a first crush (which, I do think Applegate should have leaned more into morphing as a metaphor for puberty instead of trying to get on her high horse about war). The stupid, stupid Chee dog thing that made me giggle. The infamous Rachel starfish book that was probably the only true so-bad-it’s-good book in the series. Ax’s experiences with human life like his obsessions with food and bad soaps.

I don’t know how to transition from this point.

Let’s talk about ghostwriter era now.

Ghostwriter era had some things going for it. The writing style was uneven but as a whole, I thought the ghostwriters at least tried to have some personality and character to their writing which made it leaps and bounds ahead of Applegate’s bland, bland prose. Some of the writers even managed to write the characters better than Applegate did (Marco and Toby especially). My main issue with ghostwriter era is actually Applegate’s fault, not the ghostwriters- overplotting.

These books were always stuffed to the gills with plot, but it got insanely bad during ghostwriter era. I’d love to see those outlines, because so many of the stories just have way, way too much going on. It’s not enough, for instance, that the helmacrons are wrecking havoc in Marco’s body or there are now two Rachels, there still needs to be a secondary plot about some dumb kid taking photos or an anti-morphing ray, like Applegate can’t quite believe the first plot will fill 150 44p font pages. Personally, I’m more on team “underplot”. Most of my favorite books are very “no plot just vibes” or the plots are quieter. I like books where, when someone asks me what the book is about, I just stare blankly back before pulling up the Goodreads summary on my phone and reading it back to them. Bonus points if the summary itself is vague enough to tell you absolutely nothing about the book. When things are overplotted, it feels as if the story has no room to breathe, and the fact that almost every single one of the ghostwriter books has a stupidly rushed ending has almost made me consider whether this overplotting was Applegate’s way of sabotaging her own series, ensuring that the devoted Animorphs readers were begging on their hands and knees for her to come back.

And it’s a shame, because some of the ideas during ghostwriter era had real promise if they were allowed to be the star of their own books, or if the series was allowed to have actual consequences during ghostwriter era. Cassie giving Ax brain surgery (I’ve always had a soft spot for medical body horror because I was obsessed with it as a kid). The weird underwater, inbred kingdom with its origin story being nuclear disaster. Marco’s dad getting remarried while his mom was still alive. The book with the two Andalites who I think were supposed to be lovers and one of whom couldn’t morph and the other was dying of alien AIDS because it’s the 1990s and the only socially acceptable gay people are the ones who die of a tragic illness. Alien AIDS is also the name of my shitty four-chords-and-a-dream punk band.

This review is getting unbearably long and there’s really only so much I can say about Animorphs other than I think KA Applegate is a hack and I say this as a lover of beige prose. But there’s a difference between beige prose and flavorless prose and Animorphs, specifically the KA Applegate books, is flavorless. I shouldn’t feel bored reading the final three books of this Godforsaken series because Applegate is incompetent at writing. And to some degree, I understand the arguments about having to “read for plot” or whatever in order to get any real enjoyment out of this series but I don’t naturally read for plot; even when I was a child it wasn’t the plot itself but the characters that set my imagination on fire but in Animorphs, the characters are such an afterthought. In Applegate’s defense, and the one time I will defend her, that’s not her fault as much as the bloatedness of the series causing character development to fall by the wayside, but by the end of the series Animorphs was basically about six half-colored in outlines of teens whose internal struggles and interpersonal conflicts and romances left me out in the cold. I didn’t care when Rachel died because why would I? I didn’t feel sad for Tobias or Jake and Cassie breaking up because why would I? Why should I care about any of these characters when there never really felt like a reason to care? If anything, I felt sad because Jake and Tobias felt like they had so much potential in the hands of another author. It was like Applegate either never knew what she wanted to do with them or didn’t like writing them. Tobias especially- he had one of the most involved plotlines in the entire series and he kept getting written out of missions and then, in the final book, completely abandoned until the last 20 pages, with any mention of his storyline completely left out. As a result, we got a very one-note character that felt left in solely because he seemingly was a fan favorite.

How did I feel about the ending itself? Eh. Not much, really, beyond relief the series was over. The cliffhanger ending and the letter to fans at the end felt like Applegate just wanted the series to be over and came up with some bullshit to justify ending it like that, but honestly, endings were never her strong suit so I don’t get why people would think she’d start being good now. It’s a decent ending to a series I didn’t personally like so I’ll give her that but I also don’t know why she seemed surprised when her audience, as a whole, didn’t like it and made it clear. I guess if I was actually invested in this series I would feel the same way, too, especially after 6 years and 60-something books. But that’s just me.

Would I recommend Animorphs to someone of the appropriate age to read Animorphs? No. Look, I’m not one to say this really ever, but this is, in my opinion, a series that has run its course. There are better series that have come out since that I think would have more appeal to someone elementary school-aged- the Percy Jackson series, for one- and that are better written, more competently plotted, and cohesive as a series. The quality of Children’s and Middle Grade has just really skyrocketed in recent years and I don’t know how much of a place something like Animorphs still has in the market. But that’s just my opinion, of course.

I’m going to read something else now.

ILYF Lupin, Ben, Ian, and the rest of my book club friends. Could not have tortured myself with you.

[Devin Jordan · Rating 4 out of 5]

Should You Read Animorphs?

Animorphs is a tough series to review. On the one hand, it has affected me more deeply than some of the greatest works of literature, like War and Peace or To Kill A Mockingbird. On the other hand, the series can be repetitive, contrived, inconsistent, and frustrating. It’s also packed with two-dimensional characters, and nearly half the books are as consequential as a politician’s campaign promises.

However, there are good reasons for many of these flaws (which I will explore below), and I still recommend that you give the first few entries in the series a try. If you like them, and wish to continue without suffering through the worst that Animorphs has to offer, I’ve prepared a convenient list of the books that I consider essential:

1-8
10
13
15
16
18
19
The Hork-Bajir Chronicles
26
29
33
Visser
38
45
46
49
The Ellimist Chronicles

Now, you may be saying to yourselves, did this guy really compare a middle-grade Scholastic book series about a bunch of teenagers fighting alien slugs to Leo Tolstoy’s War and Peace? Surely he’s mad! Or at the very least, suffering from some form of terminal nostalgia, unable to see the faults of something he loved as a child.

Well, I might be crazy, but there’s no nostalgia here. I read the first Animorphs book when I was nine and liked it, but not enough to find a way to get my hands on the rest of the series. Want to know how old I was when I read the rest of the books?

Thirty-eight.

And it blew my mind.

I was not expecting a series with cover art so bad everyone involved in its creation should be put in jail to blow my mind. I was not expecting to lose sleep over the only books that could ever damage a person’s hearing due to their rampant abuse of onomatopoeia. I was not expecting a bunch of kids who can turn into lobsters to raise the most gut-wrenching moral quandaries I have ever read.

I was not expecting to care so much.

So what does Animorphs have that puts its best books in the same league as the greatest works of literature?

Beautiful prose? Lol, no. Deep wisdom that will make you ponder your past and future life choices? Also no. Three-dimensional characters that feel like real people? Ehhh, there’s some of that, but that’s not the focus of these books.

At its heart, Animorphs is a treatise on war, sacrifice, violence, friendship, integrity, and an exploration of what is worth fighting and killing for. It’s also about identity - what it means to be human, what it means to be a good person in a war, and whether a human can ever understand another species.

The vehicle that drags the reader kicking and screaming through these themes is a plot paced so quickly it makes a Fast & Furious movie look like My Dinner with Andre.

Listen to this premise: Five American thirteen-year-olds in the 1990s are granted the power to morph into any animal in order fight a secret alien invasion of parasitic slugs that can attach to a person’s brain in order to control it.

This is a book series about child soldiers. But so is Harry Potter, you say! Yes, but it’s hard to take Potter and company seriously when they’re still playing Quidditch in the Half-Blood Prince while Voldemort and his Death Eaters are prancing about the world killing people. What about Ender’s Game? Closer, but not quite there. A Long Way Gone, an autobiography of a literal child soldier in the Sierra Leone civil war? Yep. That’s about the level Animorphs is on.

What this series lacks in realism and literary competence (good prose, well-developed romances, consistent tone) it makes up for in having some of the highest stakes you could possibly imagine. It’s not just about winning a war or being killed. It’s about winning a war or being enslaved. And not your classic American race-based enslavement, where you can still think whatever you want in your head, and if you really wanted to, could still punch your master in the face. We’re talking night-terror, sleep-paralysis, locked-in-syndrome enslavement, where an alien is in complete control of your mind, body, and memories, and will use this mastery to mimic your behavior in order to betray your loved ones to the same fate. All while you watch hopelessly, unable to do anything.

That’s where the stakes start in Animorphs, and they only get higher as the series progresses.

You might have noticed looking at my recommended reading list above that I’ve only included twenty-four of the sixty-two (!!) Animorphs books that exist. This is for one very good reason: this series is a rough draft.

Wait, what do you mean, rough draft?

Well, the first book was published in June of 1996, and the last book was published in May of 2001. That’s fifty-nine months. For sixty-two books. Which means that Scholastic was having the writers churn out about a book a month for this series. As I’ve said before, good writing takes time, and a month is not enough time to write a great book. Sometimes, it’s not even enough time to write a mediocre book. Famously, K.A. Applegate wrote one of the more useless books (#14, The Unknown) in the middle of the night in a dark, abandoned lobby of the Minneapolis Children’s Hospital because her only son had been born premature and was kept in the Neonatal Intensive Care Unit for three weeks.

Seriously, Scholastic, you can’t push a writing deadline back for the author living through their firstborn child almost dying? Isn’t your company centered around helping children and supporting their families? I guess another thing I didn’t expect from reading this series is me boycotting an entire company (Scholastic also did not share any of the Animorphs rights with Applegate or Grant … you know, the people who created and wrote the series).

Also, is it just me, or is it weird that K.A. Applegate named her son “Jake?”

Anyways, another thing to keep in mind about the quality of Animorphs is that Applegate and her writing partner/husband Michael Reynolds (pen name Grant), weren’t trying to write a great series. They were just trying to make a living as writers, and if Animorphs hadn’t been successful, they would have stopped writing book series.

They didn’t have a grand, overarching plot in mind. They were making stuff up as they went like they were writers on the TV show Lost (but, you know, better).

Hell, Applegate said that she was afraid she had run out of ideas when she got to book #11, The Forgotten, and she retconned a pivotal character’s motivations in book #2 barely a year and a half later in The Andalite Chronicles. The fan website Seerowpedia has even listed continuity errors for every single Animorphs book!

And then there are the ghostwriters. Sigh. You see, what with Applegate having a son to take care of, Scholastic asking for 14 Animorphs books a year, and Applegate also writing the Everworld series at the same time, Applegate tapped out after book #24. She was still plotting and editing the series, and wrote all the Megamorphs, Chronicles, #26, and the last two books, but twenty-eight stories were written by ghostwriters of variable quality and commitment to the series.

So when you combine a rushed publication schedule (because of Scholastic’s greed to make as much money as possible, not to make the best story possible), poor planning, and writers who are not invested in the series, you’re going to get quite a bit of garbage. And I, along with thousands of other Animorphs fans, are willing to wade through that garbage to find the gems that shine as brightly as any other you might find in literature.

One of my dreams is for someone to rewrite Animorphs into the final, great series of books it deserves to be. I would love to do it (with Applegate and Grant’s permission), but I doubt I will ever get the time given my current priorities. Does anyone else feel up to the challenge?

A final warning - there are a few types of people who would probably not enjoy this series:

1. If you hear the premise and say to yourself “that sounds stupid,” or “that’s silly,” then don’t read these books. If, on the other hand, you’re like me and say “that sounds awesome,” welcome to your new obsession.

2. If reading middle-grade writing makes you want to stab your eyes out with a fork to make the pain stop, then yeah, don’t read a series of books aimed at 8 to 12-year-olds. If an adult, literary style is a non-negotiable prerequisite for you to enjoy a story, reading Animorphs will feel like you’re trudging up a long, endless staircase where everything is painted some hellish beige-white (incidentally, this is how I feel reading Charles “why use one word when I can use twenty” Dickens’ prose). Some of the books are better than others, and the grade level does increase over time, but not by much.

3. If you dislike plot or action-centric books, avoid Animorphs at all cost. Every book has multiple action scenes, and not all of them are good. Though I suppose you could just skip over them.

As for the rest of you … what are you waiting for?

[Duc Hoang · Rating 4 out of 5]

Một thời mê mẩn với bộ này, hồi Animorphs mới xuất bản ở Việt Nam, mình còn nhớ đó là năm mình học lớp Năm. Cùng thời gian đó, Trẻ cũng xuất bản Harry Potter theo kiểu từng cuốn nhỏ nhỏ bỏ túi chớ không được nguyên tập như bây giờ, thành ra một tập gốc thành hai tập nhỏ, về sau họ mới in hẳn nguyên một tập. Mình hỏi một đứa bạn cùng lớp cũng đọc bộ này, học giỏi nhất nhì và mình cũng khá ngưỡng mộ (mình còn nhớ nó tên An, học sinh cưng của cô chủ nhiệm và cả năm chỉ bị khiển trách đúng một lần tội gì đó mình chả nhớ nữa, nhưng vẫn nhớ là do nó sơ hở để mấy đứa khác trong lớp quy tội với cô, mình lúc đó cũng không ghét bỏ gì nó, còn muốn làm thân là khác, nhưng thấy nó xa cách sao đó nên nó bị la mình cũng chẳng buồn, nhỏ mà đã trung dung rồi, hehe. . .). Đại khái là nó cũng khen Animorphs nên mình mới tìm đọc thử, cái rồi HP ngưng xuất bản (chắc cô Lý Lan chưa kịp dịch :3), rồi mình mới hỏi An là giờ ra tiếp Harry Potter thì nó sẽ chọn đọc HP hay Animorphs tiếp? Mình lúc đó chưa đọc HP, nhưng đọc Animorphs đã thấy hay rồi. Và câu trả lời của nó chắc cũng giống nhiều bạn đã đọc cả hai bộ, là nó sẽ chọn đọc HP tiếp vì bla bla bla... Sau này đọc thì cũng thấy HP hay thiệt, nếu hồi xưa chỉ có tiền mua một cuốn chắc mình cũng lưỡng lự dữ lắm. Nhưng hồi đó mê khoa học kĩ thuật, kiểu phi thuyền không gian, phi hành gia các thể loại nên vẫn quyết tâm đu theo Animorphs :)) Cái sau này bị Conan, Yaiba "đục khoét" tâm hồn phê quá nên mình không theo dõi Animorphs nữa, lên cấp II cũng chẳng thấy mấy đứa đọc truyện chữ như hồi xưa, kể cũng ngộ. Được mấy kì hội sách thành phố đầu tiên mình cũng tìm mua lại mấy tập, không đủ bộ nhưng cũng được cho đến hết, may ghê, ít ra cũng biết và hiểu được kết thúc của một niềm kí ức tuổi thơ, nào là nếu có được năng lực hoá thú thì sẽ hoá thành con gì, lỡ người thân của mình bị bọn Yeerk kiểm soát thì sao. . .? Nghĩ lại Animorphs còn hay hơn HP ở việc bộc lộ chân thực những góc cạnh sắt nhọn của một cuộc chiến dai dẳng không khoan nhượng giữa tốt và xấu, những tình huống bất ngờ, phản bội, hi sinh. . . Kể chi tiết thì hết hay, mà có nhiều tập hay như tập thằng trưởng nhóm bị Yeerk nhập, tập xuất hiện Number 01, tập về nguồn gốc Number 03, tập về một giống cỗ máy được chế tạo với một tri thức chung được cải hoá như thế nào (trong đó xuất hiện máy trích xuất và mua bán kí ức). . . Đọc đến cuối mình xúc động không kém gì lúc đọc tập VI HP cả :(

Tào lao bí đao nãy giờ để hồi tưởng lại thấy cũng vui vui ghê, hồi xưa nếu mà mình bạo bạo đem Animorphs hỏi con An mấy câu nữa chắc là làm bạn với nó được rồi, có khi tuổi thơ mình cũng không đến nỗi chán úa như dzậy.

Hoặc tệ hơn nữa không biết chừng :)) giỡn thôi, An, nếu bạn đọc được bài này thì cho mình hỏi bạn còn thích Animorphs không? :3

[Kevin · Rating 5 out of 5]

Rather than rate each Animorphs book individually, I just gave the entire series 5 stars. First of all, these books aren't directly targeted for a mature adult; they are mostly written for kids. Actually, they are perfect for preteens, these books got me into reading in the first place. Not saying an adult can't enjoy them, I started reading them when I was about 9 or 10 and finally read the last one when I was 22, because they most certainly can. The books start off where every good preteen sci-fi series should, aliens invading earth and a group of teenagers are the ones to stop them. Their weapon: the ability to turn into animals. Such a clever concept actually, using all our animal's powers to save the planet. The team needs to get somewhere fast? They morph into an Eagle. Sneak into an alien facility? Cockroaches work pretty well(and never seem to die). What about stomping bad guys? Try an Elephant, Tiger, or Gorilla. Each book is told from the point of view of a certain character which allows you to really get to know their personality, what are they thinking, and what they are fighting for. The entire series is 54 books long with some extra "Megamorphs" books(usually a larger unique adventure told from alternating points of view). The writing isn’t amazing, and really varies throughout the series due to ghost writing, but it has its moments, a healthy mix of young humor, solid action scenes, interesting plot twists, and tackles some social problems as the books get darker: does one person doing the right thing matter, why leadership is important, when fighting a war is worth it, and how war is a special kind of hell. I was amazed at how deep these themes were when I finally read all the books as an adult and that I couldn't fully realize them in Jr High School.

Too Long Didn't Read? I am convinced that Animorphs is the perfect mix of what a young reader needs to stay interested in and get a lot more out of reading than they would ever understand. It was my gateway to the book world, and I am most certainly going to read these to my kids someday.

[Jason]

An overview of my ratings for the series. The chronicles/super editions were largely gratuitous and didn’t really add anything interesting to the arc of the series, though they had some factor of niftiness. The longest gap between books that definitely deserved to be published is 33-44, which is also the beginning of the long gap when Applegate didn’t write any regular book, but before 45 when the first step of endgame fell into place. The 2nd-longest gap is 2 books long, though I gave 2 stars to 2 necessary books 51 & 52, which were action-centered rather than character-centered books and had people acting way OOC. Rachel’s my favorite so I may have been biased towards her books; Tobias is my runner-up but I find the two Taylor books to be unnecessarily increasing his victimhood even more…but #13 & #23 have my 2 favorite book endings, both Rachel + Tobias centered. Ghostwritten books I admire: 27, 30, 45, 48-50.

[Jordan Schnaidt · Rating 4 out of 5]

It's that same old story. Aliens invade Earth and this group of kids are the only ones who can stop them, right?

Okay, sure, but the coolest thing about the Animorphs was the power of morphing. Not only did it empower them to become any animal via a simple touch, but they got a firsthand peek into the minds of other creatures, and by extension, so did the readers. As educational as it was exciting, Animorphs is really a book series that many ages can enjoy.

The writing can have its ups and downs, and suffers somewhat after Book 24 when the series was taken over by ghostwriters so Applegate could write the Everworld series (she still had a hand in the books, but she didn't write every word at that point). Regardless, these books are fun to read as a kid and as an adult (with the bonus of finding much deeper meaning in some of the conflicts when reading as an adult), and they age well even if the Animorphs don't all have cellphones like modern kids.

[Faysal Subhani · Rating 4 out of 5]

Wow. What a series. I started reading these book sporadically and non-chronologically in grade 7. 11 years later, I sat down and read them all, including Megamorphs and Chronicles. Believe me, these books are every bit as enjoyable for an 'old' adult as they are a young one. I was surprised at how dark they can get (minus Marco's insistence on cracking jokes even in the most dire situations). Thoroughly enjoyable. Towards the end however, each character's traits are dominated by a single recurrent theme: Rachel's dark side, Tobias' brooding, Cassie's pacifism, Marco's immaturity and intelligence and Jake's tortured leadership. It gets a tad annoying as the characters take on two-dimensional personalities. However, excellent story-line throughout the series.

[Ben Bernard · Rating 4 out of 5]

The momentum of the last 5 books, for one, is pretty fantastic, and really highlights the series’ strongest thematic point: that war takes healthy, curious, fun-loving teenagers and eventually turns them into broken husks. The different alien races are treated thoughtfully, and their stories inject a nice dose of anti-colonial pathos to the series. Also, the characters are really fun and surprisingly three-dimensional for a YA series. It’s all a bit repetitive, and riddled with indulgent 1990s references, but it’s a great blend of imaginative sci-fi and relatively realistic depictions of teenage normalcy.

[Chris Cole · Rating 5 out of 5]

The entire series is something I think youth can enjoy. It's very accessible, and you get drawn in through the variety of characters. You're on this journey with them, and throughout the series you watch them go from overwhelmed young teenagers to warriors, with real and deep problems. Tensions increase and relationships strain as the kids wage war against impossible odds. Of course, I was sad for the way the series ended, but realistically, war is about death.