Started: August 25, 2022
Finished: August 29, 2022
(This review is written using my new format for book reviews.)
Background
First published in 1996, this is the first book in Scholastic's Animorph series.
Between 1996 and 2001, the series went on for 54 books. (See Wikipedia list HERE).
Between 1996 and 2001, the series went on for 54 books. (See Wikipedia list HERE).
As was standard in these young adult series, some of these books would be ghost written. But this first book was written by Katherine Applegate and her husband Michael Applegate, writing under the name K.A. Applegate.
My History with this Series
I was too old for this series. I was in my senior year of high school in 1996, and this series is aimed at much younger readers. (8-12, I'm guessing?)
I wasn't even aware of it until I discovered people making videos on Youtube.
In particular, this Youtube video: Opinionated Animorphs Book Review - Introduction
In particular, this Youtube video: Opinionated Animorphs Book Review - Introduction
The video is dated 2009, and I think that's when I saw it. The Youtube algorithm just served it up to me one day, and I watched it.
If you watch the video, the reviewer admits to imitating the style of SF Debris' opinionated reviews. Which is probably why the Youtube algorithm served it to me. I was watching a lot of SF Debris back in 2009. (Sigh. For someone who is always lamenting how few books I read every year, I sure waste a lot of time on Youtube. But then, I've made this confession before.)
Anyway, for whatever reason, that video stuck in my mind over the years. It definitely gave the impression that Animorphs was a weird series. And also it gave me the impression that Animorphs had been a big deal to the generation that was 10-15 years younger than me.
The next memory I have of this series was shortly after I arrived in Vietnam. I was chatting to a Vietnamese colleague about books. He was about 15 years younger than me, and he mentioned the Animorph series as something that he had loved as a child. But he also told me that this series was connected to a traumatic event in his childhood. He had been reading these books at school, and his teacher had disapproved of the books because they weren't educational. So his teacher had actually confiscated all his Animorph books. He told me he was still upset about that all these years later.
(I don't actually remember whether he had been reading these books in English or in Vietnamese, but a quick Google search shows that these books were actually translated into Vietnamese--see Reddit Post HERE-- so presumably he was probably reading the Vietnamese version.)
He was telling me how great the books were, and he recommended them to me. I told him that I'm sure they must have been great for kids, but I was now well past the point where these books could have any appeal to me, so I would give them a pass.
A few days later, he told me that, inspired by our conversation, he had gone back and starting re-reading the Animorph books. And that they were just as good as he had remembered. "Joel Swagman, you HAVE to read these books," he said.
Well, that was 7 years ago. And here I am just getting to them now. (As readers of this blog know, it's not unusual for several years to elapse between when someone recommends a book to me, and when I finally get around to it. See HERE, HERE, HERE, HERE, etc.)
Why I Finally Read This Book
Since we had the second baby, I get all of my reading done during my lunch break at work these days. Lately I've been carrying around The Wayfarer Redemption with me, but one morning, I forgot to put it in my bag and take it to work with me.
Well, then I was faced with a choice. I could either lose a day or reading, or I could get another book out of the school library. (Some embarrassingly, I have to admit this has been happening to me -- a lot lately. I obviously need to be more careful about checking my bag when I leave the house.)
Well, as with the previous - couple times I was in this position, the goal was to find a book that I could read over lunch break, but something that wouldn't get put on my reading list for weeks. Something I could finish off in a couple of days.
I had some time ago realized that my school library carried several books from The Animorphs series, and I had been toying with the idea of checking a couple of them out one day. Well, now was clearly the time.
Plot Summary
The book begins with five teenagers, who are walking home from the mall when they encounter a spaceship in an abandoned construction site. The spaceship contains a dying alien, who informs them of an ongoing conspiracy to take over the earth. The dying alien also gives the teenagers the ability to morph into any animal that they have touched. (Hence the name of the series: Animorphs).
Then another spaceship shows up, and several different species of aliens emerge. The reader is introduced in short order to the Andalites, the Hork-Bajirs, the Yeerks, and the Taxxons. There's a brief fight, the good alien is killed, and the teenagers escape.
After this, the book takes on an Invasion of the Body Snatchers type plot as the teenagers discover that several of the people in their community are being controlled by aliens, and they begin to realize that they can trust no one.
They begin to experiment with their morphing powers, and there's a trip to the zoo in which they are able to touch several exotic animals. (They need to touch the animals in order to gain the power to morph into them.)
There's a climatic battle at the end in which the teenagers assume their animal forms to attack one of the hidden bases of the aliens. But the battle ends indecisively. It's clear that it's going to be a long struggle to try to stop the mind-controlling aliens. (Which is, obviously, where the remaining 53 books in this series will come in.)
The Reading Experience / Evaluation / Extended Quotation
As I mentioned above, I was too old to enjoy The Animorphs when they first came out. But, in the scheme of things, I really didn't miss it by that much. Had these books come out just 8 years earlier, I would have been right in the target audience.
At any rate, I feel like I'm of the generation to be familiar with these types of books even if not this specific book. The scholastic logo on the bottom left-hand corner of cover of the book gives me a certain twinge of nostalgia, as does the bad CGI on the cover page, and that cheesy science fiction-esque font.
I feel like I read a few of these types of books between 4th-6th grade, even if I didn't read this particular series.
It's got a narrative style I also find familiar. It's the kind of book in which the narration is supposed to be written in the same way that a kid would talk, but which comes off just a little bit too corny to be entirely believable. You know these types of books, right?
Perhaps a quotation would help to illustrate:
My life used to be pretty normal. Normal, that is, until one Friday night at the mall. I was there with Marco, my best friend. We were playing video games and hanging out at this cool store that sells comic books and stuff. The usual.Marco and I had run out of quarters for the games, right when he was ahead by a lot of points. Mostly, we’re equally good at games. I have a system at home so I get lots of practice time in, but Marco has this amazing ability to analyze games and figure out all the little tricks. So sometimes he beats me.Or maybe I just wasn’t concentrating very well. I’d had kind of a bad day at school. I’d tried out for the basketball team and I didn’t make the cut.It was no big deal, really. Except that Tom — he’s my big brother—he was this total legend on the junior high basketball team. Now he’s the main scorer for the high school team. So everyone expected me to make the team, easy. Only I didn’t.Like I said, no big thing. But it was on my mind, just the same. Lately, Tom and I hadn’t been hanging out as much. Not like we used to. So I figured, you know, if I got his old position on the team …Well, anyway, we were out of money and getting ready to head home when we ran into Tobias. Tobias was … I mean, I guess he still is kind of a strange guy. He was new at school, and he wasn’t the toughest kid around, so he got picked on a lot.I actually met Tobias when he had his head in a toilet. There were these two big guys holding him down and laughing while they flushed, sending Tobias’s straggly blond hair swirling around the bowl. I told the two creeps to back off, and ever since then, Tobias figured I was his friend.“What’s up?” Tobias asked.I shrugged. “Not much. We’re heading home.”“Out of quarters,” Marco commented. “Certain people keep forgetting that the SleazeTroll shows up right after you cross the Nether Fjord. So certain people keep losing the game — and losing our quarters.” Marco kept jerking his thumb at me, just in case Tobias couldn’t figure out who he meant by “certain people.”“So, like, maybe I’ll walk home with you guys,” Tobias said.I said sure. Why not? (from pages 2-3)
I don't know--even though I never read this particular series, that writing style to me just strikes me as very recognizably "Scholastic Young Adult Book". I feel when reading a paragraph like that, I can instantly remember my 4th Grade classroom, and elementary school pizza parties.
(Although it's perhaps worth remembering that not all Young Adult books have this style. Harry Potter and the Philosopher's Stone, which came out in 1997, only one year after this book, had a much more sophisticated style of narration. Perhaps that's part of the reason J.K. Rowling was so successful in her day?)
At any rate, whatever you might think about its literary merits, it can certainly be said that the style of Animorphs is undemanding. I had no problem dipping in and out of the book during my little brief breaks throughout the workday, and I finished it off in just a few days.
There are some sections in which some of the alien creatures were described in which I got a little bit confused as to what I was supposed to be visualizing. For example, the description of the Hork-Bajir aliens:
They leaped from the ship, whirling and thrusting and slicing the air—creatures that looked like walking weapons. They stood on two bent-back legs and had two very long arms. On each arm there were curved horn-blades growing out of the wrist and elbow. There were other blades at their bent-back knees, and two more blades at the end of their tails. They had feet like a Tyrannosaurus rex.But it was the head that got your attention — a neck like a snake, a mouth that was almost a falcon’s beak, and, from the forehead, three daggerlike horns raked forward. (from page 29)
Although to be fair, when I came back later and read that whole part again slowly and carefully, it made enough sense. (I think because the book is written in an undemanding style, I had allowed my brain to become lazy the first time reading through it, and didn't want to go through the hard work of trying to process the written descriptions of these bizarre space aliens.)
Another slight complaint is that there is a lot of information dumped on the reader about the Andalites, the Hork-Bajirs, the Yeerks, and the Taxxons at the very beginning of the book. Then we don't encounter these aliens again until the end of the book, at which point I had a bit of trouble remembering what kind of alien was a Yeerk and what kind was a Taxxon.
But on the whole, the style of this book was very undemanding, and I was able to flip through the pages very quickly, and finish it off in a few days.
Other Notes
* My school library has the first four books in this series, and after book 4, there are gaps. (My best guess is that at one time the whole collection was on the shelves, but over time books got lost.) So at the moment, I can't read the complete series, but I can dip into it and read some of it.
I might just do that. The first book was easy and painless to read, so why not? I might just read some of the other Animorphs books in the library.
It's written in an incredibly cheesy style, but it's also readable. The climactic action scene is pretty decent. Some competent set-up and pay-offs. I'm going to have to go with 4 out of 10 stars.
August 28, 2022 Animorphs 1: The Invasion p.1-176,
September 4, 2022 Animorphs 1: The Invasion p.176-184
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