The Invasion
For 2024 my goal will be to read the entire Animorph Series
Ahh, Anadalites with boobs. Andaboobs. We love the fan fic and fan art. Although the ones where Tobias and Harry Potter screw, I'm just not sure about those. I'm just not sure raptor-wizard sex is advisable. - Katherine Applegate, main author of Animorphs
I just became a parent. My little hedgehog is going to grow up in a world where politics are more polarized than when I was growing up. She is going to have a mom and dad who have different, powerful, and complicated emotions and relationship to the world around them at a macro and micro level. When my child came into the world they looked like an alien without any knowledge or experience of power, of nature, of what planet earth has to offer, and of making complex decisions big and small while navigating through life. I wanted a way to think through how to share that with this child. So naturally, I am rereading the YA science fiction series about twelve-year-olds1 fighting a secret guerrilla war against aliens that have come to enslave the human race, Animorphs. There will still be religious and ethical musings, there will still be Catholic culture stuff, there will still be tangents on Effective Altruism and politics. But mostly, there will be Animorphs.
This series by KA Applegate2 is likely one you’ve seen if you’ve gone to any library and passed by the YA or children section. It is very good, the main series is 54 books long, and explores a striking number of themes of loss, identity, manipulation, faith in hopelessness, and search for meaning.
The protagonists - Jake, Rachel, Tobias, Marco, and Cassie3- tell their story over the course of these books. The first book, the Invasion, introduces them pretty well right away. Jake narrates the first book. He is a normal kid frustrated that he didn’t make the basketball team because his brother Tom used to be a star. He likes Cassie, he stands up to bullies, and each of the other characters look up to him as this confident guy who has natural leadership qualities. Marco, Jake’s best friend, is good at video games, cracks jokes, and is a wise guy. But Marco comes from a broken family where his mom disappeared4 and his dad fell apart.
Tobias is introduced as a kinda strange guy whom Jake saved from bullies so hangs around. He is the new kid in school who bounces around an uncle and aunt and is a bit aloof5. Rachel looks like a model but thinks she is Storm from X-Men and will be occasionally referred to as Xena Warrior Princess throughout the series6. Rachel immediately starts calling out Jake for a thoughtless misogynistic comment in the first few pages. Cassie is black wearing a plaid shirt and jeans when we meet her, lacking fashion sense with a friend, Rachel, who has fashion sense. She is casual and able to cut off an argument before it starts. Her parents work with animals, so she is an animal lover.
The first book gives us our initial situation that will be repeated in future books. The five kids decide to walk through a deserted construction site while walking home one day and meet an alien, an Andalite, who tells them their world is undergoing The Invasion7 by slugs, Yeerks, who enslave people’s minds. The Andalite looks like a furry blue centaur without a mouth, with a scorpion like tail, and two eyes floating on stalks on top of their head. The Yeerks are slugs that slither in through the ear canal to take them over. This Andalite alien gives our protagonists the power to morph using a small blue box and then is murdered by the main antagonist of the series, Visser Three, who controls an Andalite and can also morph - the same power the protagonists of the story have. Our heroes hide and watch as the Andalite who gave them powers is eaten alive by a massive otherworldly monster. They escape, chased by Yeerk controlled Hork-Bajir and Taxxons - Hork Bajir are 7-foot monsters with blades on their bodies while Taxxons are giant centipedes that walk upright and will cannibalize any other living being. Apart from witnessing the murder of the first alien he has ever met, during the escape Jake also runs into a homeless man and leaves him for dead as he is fleeing. Thus begins the never-ending traumatic experiences that flit by in the series.
The next day Tobias shows up at his house and tells Jake this was not a dream, and he morphed his pet cat with their new powers. Jake believes him when he sees the morph and then morphs his dog Homer to try it out. Jake’s brother Tom comes in while he is in morph. Jake smells something odd about Tom8. The entire group meets at a barn by Cassie’s house where a lot of sick animals are nursed back to health, this will end up being the primary meeting site for the group. After a brief run in with a police officer who suspiciously asks them if they have any idea about kids who were setting off fireworks in the construction site the night before - the group discusses whether to use their powers, voting to wait on the decision for now.
Back at Jake’s house, Jake and Marco play video games. Tom joins them and also just happens to mention the kids who were setting off fireworks just like the cop did and invites them to become a part of this cult-like group he is a part of called The Sharing. At this point, Marco and Jake get into a fight when Marco suggests Tom is a Controller, mind-controlled by a Yeerk in his head.
I don’t know when I figured it out as a kid but as an adult it isn’t subtle that Tom is a Controller with a Yeerk in his head. When Marco figures it out and Jake gets mad it is almost confusing, Jake hears a familiar voice when escaping after watching the Andalite killed. Tom hasn’t been hanging out with Jake as much. Tom smells weird. He is into this cult group that just so happens to be associated with another Controller. Then we finally get to the part of the story where Jake figures it out. All of the Animorphs go to the beach party Tom invited them to, just to check it out. And while Jake talks to his brother about how fun it is, Tom suggests becoming a full member which makes something weird happen.
At that moment, something weird happened. I was looking at Tom, and he was smiling at me. But then his face kind of twitched. His head started to pull to one side, like he was trying to shake his head only he couldn’t quite do it. For just a split second there was a look in his eyes—scared or … or something. He was looking right at me, and it was like some different person, some scared person, was looking out of those same eyes.
This is the point in the book where Jake knows Tom is a controller. Remember, these books are for twelve-year olds. We aren’t even one book in, and we have a passage that could be a brief flash in a horror book. Since it is for twelve-year-olds, it is followed up by Jake sneaking near the full-member meeting for the sharing in a dog morph. The dog is happy-go-lucky which gives Jake some escape from the fear and loss he is feeling about his brother.
if someone would just throw a stick out into the surf I could go after it. The water would make me happy. The chasing would make me happy. Now I knew why Tobias was so reluctant to leave his hawk’s body9. Being an animal could be a nice way to escape from all your troubles.
Apart from the moment the five friends meet the Andalite who tells them about The Invasion10 , this is also the moment the team is committed to fighting the Yeerks. This first book sets up a lot that spurs on the series and just contains non-stop plot. But in some sense, this first book and a few after that follow are also exploring the question:
What is it that is worth fighting for?
So called just war doctrine11 can be found from Aquinas, Aristotle, and plenty of other places can give the start of an answer as policy - I am most familiar with this one12
the damage inflicted by the aggressor on the nation or community of nations must be lasting, grave, and certain;
all other means of putting an end to it must have been shown to be impractical or ineffective;
there must be serious prospects of success;
the use of arms must not produce evils and disorders graver than the evil to be eliminated. The power of modern means of destruction weighs very heavily in evaluating this condition.
To a certain extent the rest of the series will explore these ideas more fully. They articulate great first principles to evaluate whether a war is just after the fact. However, they are also almost entirely useless or irrelevant to the decision making in these books and in life when figuring out why a typical soldier might act. The first is straightforward, the Yeerks are the aggressors. But means other than aggressive action being shown as impractical or ineffective? Chances of success? Production of evils from taking up arms? These aren’t just massive unknowns but inherently unknowable.
Tobias articulates his justification for answering the call to arms for the broader project they begin in this book by invoking Elfangor's sacrifice, the Andalite they met.
“Suddenly the wimp is a hero,” Marco sneered. This time Tobias didn’t blush. “Maybe I just found something worth fighting for, Marco.” “You don’t even fight for yourself,” Marco said. “That was before,” Tobias said softly. “Before the Andalite. Before he died trying to save us. I can’t let that go. I can’t let him die for nothing. So whatever you guys decide, I’m going to fight.”
Jake’s justification, on the other hand, is freeing his brother. This is what leads the Animorphs to travel to the Yeerk pool. First, they visit The Gardens, basically a zoo where Cassie’s family works, to acquire powerful morphs as firepower like a gorilla, a tiger, and an elephant. Jake morphs a lizard to stalk the Assistant Principal of their school, Chapman, and learns of an entrance to the Yeerk pool where Yeerks basically need to go to eat every few days. On the night they infiltrate the Yeerk pool Cassie is captured to be changed into a controller. Then we encounter the Yeerk pool for the first time.
“This is gigantic,” Marco said. “This isn’t just under the school. This is under half the town. Those stairways must lead up to a dozen secret entrances.” He shook his head. “Jake, they have this entire area set up with secret passageways. Oh, man. This is worse … this is so much worse … so much bigger …” I felt the same despair. We were fools. This wasn’t some little group of alien bad guys we were dealing with. To build this underground city, these guys had power we couldn’t even imagine.
The climax of the first book doesn’t end in victory. The entire point was to rescue Tom specifically and he is recaptured, along with almost every other person they release from cages. Only one person makes it out. To make matters worse, Tobias is in morph for over two hours when he finally makes it out. This means Tobias is now permanently trapped in hawk morph. Katherine Applegate has said that one of the reasons she did this was to make it absolutely clear that the time limit of two hours was extremely serious. This series of books may be written for children but the author wasn’t messing around.
So that was The Invasion, the first book in a long series. There is a ton of plot in this book to recap and a ton of characters to introduce. We’ve now been introduced to the Animorphs, the Andalites, the Yeerks, Visser Three, Taxxons, Hork Bajir, Morphing, Jake’s brother Tom as a Yeerk, The Sharing, Cassie’s barn as a meeting place, The Gardens as a place to collect powerful morphs, smaller morphs as spying animals, The Yeerk Pool, and consequences for staying in morph too long. The book is a lot of fun and breezes by over the time it takes to watch a movie. I’m going to enjoy finishing them over the next year.
Ok, the age of the Animorphs throughout the series is a bit more complicated a question, but 12 is a rough sense of how old they are in the beginning of the story, so we’ll stick with that.
Katherine Applegate and Michael Grant co-wrote many of the books. This also turns out to be more complicated.
There will be more protagonists
Under mysterious circumstances, I wonder if that’ll come back around.
He’s so different in this series about aliens, I wonder if that’ll come back around.
A reference I didn’t really get when I read these books as a kid and still haven’t bothered to look up.
Hey that’s the name of the book!
Huh, Tom smells strange, I wonder if that’ll come back around.
Tobias doesn’t want to leave his hawk body, I wonder if that’ll come back around.
See 7
Yeah, I’m gonna be one of those pedantic annoying people. I can almost hear one of the Podcast hosts of a popular podcast I listen to saying “Oh my God, shut up!” I’m sorry, but also, it’s who I am
Catechism of the Catholic Church