By book 6 of the Animorphs series, our kids are really starting to GO THROUGH IT, and by “GO THROUGH IT,” I mean they are getting dismembered on a regular basis. Usually it’s in their animal morph though. At this point.
I’m seven books into the series. Our kids have acquired dozens of animals’ DNA at this point, including vertebrates AND invertebrates. They’re also starting to lean into their favorites. For battle, Jake relies on tiger, Rachel goes elephant or bear, Cassie goes wolf, and Marco goes gorilla. But they’ve also acquired insect and rodent morphs for stealth missions (ants, cockroaches, flies, Rachel can morph into a shrew) and aquatic creatures for water and…uh… grocery store missions (dolphins, trout, lobsters).
The Predator is Marco’s first book, and he’s easily my favorite because I love a snarky character. I changed up his 90s casting in my head, though, because he is finally identified as Latino (as opposed to the sorta generic ethnic description he had in the previous books), so sorry Dante Basco, you’re out, and Mike Vitar is in. (This entire cast of Animorphs are all of 90s Liz’s favorite Teen Beat pinups.) Notable things that happen in this volume are: the kids morph into ants and are almost pulled apart by another ant colony; Marco and Jake morph into lobsters to hide in a grocery store deli, which I think is VERY smart (and almost costs them their lives again when a lady buys them for her dinner lol); and Marco learns someone very close to him has been taken over by the supreme leader of the Yeerks. I think this is my favorite volume so far.
The Capture sees us back in Jake’s brain, and the most important thing that happens in THIS book is that the Yeerks finally worm their way into one of the Animorph’s brains – Jake’s brain, that is. I was riding high on a gummy substance when I read this book so it COULD have been my altered brain state, but this was the first book that read a little cheesy to me, but in a GOOD way. Like, the Yeerk talks like Skeletor inside Jake’s brain, and he responds with lines that would fit right into Will Smith’s dialogue in Independence day. “Welcome to Earth: it’s a tough neighborhood!” (I paraphrased, but not too much.) Notably, the kids kill their first Yeerk, by starving it to death. DARK but, in my opinion, necessary.
The Stranger is Rachel’s book, and she has a personal conflict as well as an earth-shattering one: her parents are split up and her father has invited her to move across the country with him. Ann M. Martin gets a lot of credit for featuring a kid of divorce as a main character, so I’d like to give K.A. Applegate (and maybe Michael Grant? Some people say these books are co-written by them but I’m unclear on how much) some cred for that as well. Rachel is juggling her own personal angst, which sends her wrecklessly morphing and acquiring morphs from dangerous animals ALL ALONE. So it’s not surprising that she considers moving with her dad, which would give her an easy out for giving up the dangers of battling the Yeerks. Notably, the kids destroy a source of Yeerk energy. We also meet a new type of alien (?) or spiritual creature (?) who is kind of like a Time Lord, or maybe like a TVA agent, but sorta also like a Celestial, or maybe that guy who narrates the What If series? A combination of all of those things? Basically, WE HAVE TIME TRAVEL NOW!
My next read is the first MEGAMORPHS and I love dual/group narration so I’m excited for that series!