Keith Nallawalla
This article outlines the correct reading order of the Animorphs books, information about the new Audiobook series & Graphic Novels as well as some other retro content you may have missed or forgotten about.
My Introduction to the Animorphs Franchise
As a kid, I thought I was a pretty big Animorphs fan, bridging my junior novel reading between Goosebumps in the mid-late 90s until I got into Harry Potter in early 2000. I used to borrow most of these from the local library, plus I own a few of the special one-off books that explain the lore outside of the main series.
I don’t remember exactly how far I got into the series as a kid, but I think I got to around book 20 and watched as much of the TV series as I could. Since then, I’ve never revisited the series until now in 2023 as a 35-year-old as I’ve discovered that the series has finally been adapted into audiobooks and graphic novels.
Revisiting all the audiobooks has allowed me to get through the books very quickly whilst driving to work. I’m very surprised, even impressed with how dark and suspenseful these books for kids are. I often find myself on the edge of my seat, white-knuckling the steering wheel as I drive.
Animorphs: A Brief Summary
Animorphs is a young adult novel series written by K.A. Applegate, a pseudonym for Katherine Applegate and her husband Michael Grant, as well as a series of ghostwriters. It focuses on a group of young teenagers as they use their new morphing ability to fight a secret war against body-snatching slugs called Yeerks which are quietly enslaving the humans of earth and sentient creatures across the universe.
These books tackle some very dark themes, including war, family, sanity, leadership, morality and more.
Why Has The Animorphs Series Laid Dormant?
Unlike Scholastic’s other big kids/teens franchise; Goosebumps by R.L Stine which is an anthology series, with the ability to pump out infinite content, Animorphs had a very distinct start and end point to the series. Meaning that it is not really possible to keep creating new content with these characters. Goosebumps on the other hand can keep on going and going across all types of media.
As a publisher, Scholastic would have had trouble keeping the IP active without any genuinely new content to sell, so other than a few soggy attempts to re-release the first few books, there hasn’t been much they could do until now.
Luckily for fans of the Animorphs series, Scholastic has now got onto the audiobook and graphic novel bandwagon, allowing fans of the series to very slowly revisit the beloved franchise. These new interpretations are arguably better than getting Katherine Applegate to squeeze out unnecessary extra content the way JK Rowling has with her expanded Harry Potter content.
The Complete Animorphs Reading Order & Book Covers Animorphs Memes Animorph Parody: Vegemorphs New Animorphs Covers (2011) Animorphs Collection Box Set (2020) Animorphs Audio Books on Audible & iTunes Animorphs Graphic Novels Animorphs Transformers Figures Animorphs TV Series Animorphs Taco Bell, Pizza Hut & KFC Toys Buy Animorphs Art Prints Animorphs Video Games
The Complete Animorphs Reading Order & Book Covers
One annoying thing about the Animorphs book titles sound very similar to each other, plus there are multiple side-stories that occur between the regular books, which are not clearly numbered. This also makes it very tricky on Audible, where the title number is not part of the book name, so as I’ve been listening to them, I have to keep checking an online reading order list almost daily.
So here’s a list of in which order the books are intended to be read.
1: The Invasion
The Animorphs get their powers and they have their first mission to the Yeerk Pool.
2: The Visitor
Rachel morphs a cat to spy on her vice principal who is a controller.
3: The Encounter
The Animorphs get their wolf morphs and encounter the Yeerk truck ship.
4: The Message
The Animorphs rescue Andalite Ax, who joins the team.
5: The Predator
The Animorphs find out that morphing into Ants isn’t fun.
6: The Capture
Jake gets a Yeerk in his head.
7: The Stranger
The Animorphs first encounter the space god, the Ellimist.
7.5: Megamorphs 1: The Andalite’s Gift
8: The Alien
Ax almost gets to kill Visser Three and explains Seerow’s Kindness.
9: The Secret
The Animorphs find out that morphing into Termites isn’t fun
10: The Android
Using the eyes of a wolf spider, Marco discovers Erek the Android
11: The Forgotten
A story set in the jungle, which never actually happened.
12: The Reaction
Rachel meets her celebrity crush and has an allergic reaction to her crocodile morph.
12.5: The Andelite Chronicles
13: The Change
Tobias gets his morphing ability back and helps free some Hork-Bajir.
14: The Unknown
Yeerks infest horses to access an Area 51 type place.
15: The Escape
The Yeerks are trying to make hammer head shark warriors to use in battle on another planet.
16: The Warning
The Animorphs meets a Bill Gates inspired character online.
17: The Underground
The Animorphs get Yeerks addicted to oatmeal.
18: The Decision
The Animorphs morph into mosquitos and their excess mass in Z-Space has an accident.
18.5: Megamorphs 2: In the Time of Dinosaurs
19: The Departure
Cassie finds a possible Yeerk ally and cheats the morphing rules.
20: The Discovery
A new member, David joins the Animorphs.
21: The Threat
David is a liability.
22: The Solution
They have to get rid of David.
22.5: The Hork-Bajir Chronicles
23: The Pretender
Tobias finds out who his real father is.
24: The Suspicion
The Helmacrons are introduced and they shrink everyone.
25: The Extreme
The Animorphs end up in the North Pole and morph into polar bears.
26: The Attack
The Animorphs encounter the Howlers.
27: The Exposed
They morph into squid to access the Pemalite Ship.
28: The Experiment
The Animorphs visit a meat packing plant.
29: The Sickness
Cassie gives Ax brain surgery.
29.5: Megamorphs 3: Elfangor’s Secret
30: The Reunion
Marco sets a trap to take out both Visser Three and his mum.
31: The Conspiracy
Jake has to stop his brother from killing their dad.
32: The Separation
Rachel gets chopped in half as a starfish, resulting in two of her.
33: The Illusion
Tobias gets to morph into Ax and is tortured by Taylor.
34: The Prophecy
An Arn (creator of the Hork-Bajir) visits.
35: The Proposal
Marco’s dad is getting married, and Marco ruins a celebrity controller’s public image.
35.5 Visser
36: The Mutation
They find an underwater civilisation called the Nartec, similar to Atlantis.
37: The Weakness
Jake goes on holiday and Rachel takes temporary leadership.
38: The Arrival
Four more Andalites come to earth.
39: The Hidden
A buffalo and an ant get morphing abilities.
40: The Other
It is revealed that Andalites treat the disabled very poorly.
40.5: Megamorphs 4: Back to Before
41: The Familiar
Jake has a dream about the future. The most skippable book.
42: The Journey
The Helmacrons are back and the team have a “Magic School Bus” journey through Marco’s body.
43: The Test
Tobias reencounters Taylor and digs holes as a Taxxon.
44: The Unexpected
Cassie ends up alone in Australia.
45: The Revelation
Marco’s Dad Discovers Z-Space and gets hunted by the Yeerks.
46: The Deception
Visser Two infiltrates the military.
47: The Resistance
The Animorphs are considering going public, a group of sci-fi fan campers help on a mission.
47.5 The Ellimist Chronicles
48: The Return
With both the worst cover and the worst story, we endure the Super-Rachel story.
49: The Diversion
Human Controllers have started obtaining strong animal morphs and the families of the team get involved.
50: The Ultimate
The Animorphs recruit several disabled kids, who they knew would be safe from the Yeerks to obtain their morphing ability and join the fight.
51: The Absolute
The Yeerks are now able to morph, the Animorphs learn that ducks are great for long-distance flights and the invasion is finally revealed to the public.
52: The Sacrifice
A mission involving the auxiliaries, parents and the Hork-Bajir infiltrate the national guard base to steal explosives to take out the Yeerk Pool.
53: The Answer
The team make a deal with the free Taxxons. Jake makes difficult decisions involving his family members.
54: The Beginning
The final book mostly covers the events after the war has ended. It skips too quickly between events and has a lazy ending.
When thinking carefully about the vintage Animorphs covers, I’ve noticed that the characters are often wearing baggy clothes, which are not possible to morph with, only skin-tight clothes can be used when morphing. I hope someone got fired for this blunder.
Alternamorphs
There were two “Choose Your Own Adventure” style game books that were told in the 2nd person perspective with you as the new sixth Animorph.
1: The First Journey
2: The Next Passage
Meet The Stars of Animorphs
This book has a chapter about each actor, plus additional chapters about different elements of creating the show.
Animorphs Memes
The iconic covers of the original main Animorphs book series have made it a perfect meme format. Here are a few I’ve seen on Facebook recently, as well as a few other Animorphs memes from Facebook groups such as Animorphs Yeerkposting and Animorphs.
into a squirrel
using this art style to promote their events.
and the Furious references.
Animorphs art
nibbling on the wooden stick”
always the most upsetting.
Animorph Parody: Vegemorphs
For some reason, Vegemorphs by “Leif E. Green” was released, a parody that seems to involve people morphing into vegetables. Vegetables are the opposite of Animals, you see.
New Animorphs Covers (2011)
In 2011 there was an attempt to reprint the series with new cover art, showing a lenticular portrait of a character morphing into an animal. But most images online show the frame of them in mid-morph, which looks hideous.
These reissues are far less memorable. The lenticular image is pretty cool in concept, but it’s just a cheap gimmick. The original cover artwork was so iconic, that many kids at stores or libraries would play around with the covers and still have fond memories of them.
These newer releases are mostly forgotten. The original covers were so iconic they still inspire memes to this day. Apparently, these books had updates to the pop culture references, bringing them more in line with kids of the time. I haven’t read them, but at some point, Marco compares Rachel to Storm from X-Men rather than Xena Warrior Princess.
A few lines here and there are changed to remove plot holes, the most notable being that in the first book, Visser 3 originally appears to be meeting Elfangor for the first time, but now it is clear they have met previously.
There were also certain words that were italicised for emphasis, where this formatting was removed in the reprints. This is probably for the best as with all the thought-speak and other formatting in these books, it does make them a tough read.
Animorphs Collection Box Set (2020)
In 2020, Scholastic Inc. rereleased the first six books with their iconic original cover artwork in a cool tin. This is really cool, but I don’t think they released anything further than this, it must not have sold too well.
Animorphs Audio Books on Audible & iTunes
Since 2020, the mainline Animorphs books have been regularly released on Audible and iTunes as audiobooks. This is great for adults who don’t have the time to sit down and read a book and like to listen to audiobooks whilst driving to work each day. It is also a great new way for long-running fans of the books to experience the books in a new way.
Animorphs Audiobook Series Review
Multiple Narrators for Animorphs Audiobooks
As each of the main Animorphs books is narrated by a different member of the Animorphs, each book in the main series is narrated by one of six (that I know of) narrators. Whilst each actor has their own accents for the other characters, it is quite engaging to have a wholly unique voice as the narrator to each book, with the same returning voice actors coming back every 5-6 novels.
- MacLeod Andrews is the voice actor in Jake’s audiobooks.
- Emily Ellet is the voice actress in Rachel’s audiobooks.
- Michael Crouch is the voice actor in Tobias’ audiobooks.
- Sisi Aisha Johnson is the voice actress in Cassie’s audiobooks.
- Ramón de Ocampo is the voice actor in Marco’s audiobooks.
- Adam Verner is the voice actor in Ax’s audiobooks.
I think the voice cast does an amazing job. I think overall the performances improve as the books progress. I found a few of Sisi Aisha Johnson’s performances, particularly compelling. My only minor gripes with the audiobooks come from the story itself, rather than the performances themselves.
Given that each audiobook is only about 3 hours long and that most of them are already available, I am basically bingeing these. This means I am getting through each book every 1-2 days. The many, many recaps at the start of the series get kind of annoying. It feels like its padding out the length of the book in a lazy way, but I assume the original reason for this was so that if you were a kid who got a random book as a gift, or you couldn’t find the next book at the library, you could skip ahead and still follow roughly what is going on.
The intro to each book doesn’t really make sense. Most of the series starts out talking about how they can’t tell you their last names or where they are so that they don’t get caught by the Yeerks. They make it very clear where they are located based on given most of their adventures crossover with major Yeerk characters such as Chapman, Visser 3 and Visser 1. It should be pretty easy for a Yeerk to figure out who they are. This just feels like another way to pad out the intro, but I guess the original idea was to stress why they are keeping their identities secret within the world of the book.
The worst part of the audiobook series is the price. On iTunes, each book is about $20 AUD, which is 4x the price of eBooks versions. Audible is cheaper at about $15 AUD each. Most of the time, Audible charges the same flat price for any audiobook unless it’s on sale. This means each Animorphs book with a length of about 3 hours is the same price as something that might run for 20+ hours. My recommendation is to bulk buy credits in lots of 3 and to look out for promotions.
Animorphs Graphic Novels
When researching this article, I immediately checked what are the most searched terms regarding Animorphs to ensure I cover a lot of the popular terms regarding this series. Now, I’ve been hoping for an animated series or even another Live Action Animorphs TV series reboot, but I guess a graphic novel will do.
I found that these are very affordable on Amazon.com.au and similar websites. I ordered the first three that are available so far. Each book covers the events of 1 novel. These are published by Scholastic’s Graphix subbrand and unlike typical comic books, these are only sold as complete stories, not as a series of short issues. I’m concerned that as these are taking about a year each to produce, it is unlikely the whole series will get made unless additional artists get involved.
In terms of artwork, human characters all look a little bit too similar to each other to be able to tell them apart at times. Especially Tobias and Rachel. The action and transformation scenes are quite good though, giving a good sense of the body horror described in the books that was kind of glossed over in other mediums.
Animorphs Transformers Figures
Hasbro, creator of Transformers released a small series of Animorphs figures alongside the second series of Beast Wars Transmetals. These transforming action figures were very similar to the Beast Wars toyline, but the animals transformed into the human and alien characters of the Animorphs books and TV show rather than robots.
Despite the Transformers logo on the packaging, there is no crossover between the worlds of the Transformers and Beastwars characters with the Animorphs characters. They are simply made by the same company and function similarly.
Each of the regular Animorphs figures also included a plastic Yeerk toy and three heads for the character, a further distinction from the Beast Wars figures. This included the human face, the animal’s head and a deformed mid-morph mix of the two.
I recall thinking these toys were kind of cool when I was a kid but thought the human forms were very ugly and did not look nearly as complete as I’d have hoped, showing much of the animal body. The Yeerk toys were very cool though.
Another difference is that most of these figures included additional accessories such as claws or extra legs or claws to be added onto the animal morph. Unfortunately, on the secondary market, these pieces are nearly always missing, making them difficult to collect.
Each character had 1-2 figures released and for some reason, a combiner figure exists – the Tri-Rex uses 3 figurines of Cassie, Marco and Jake that go together to make a single Tyrannosaurus Rex figure.
Animorphs Transformers Instructions
Here are some of the instructions for the Animorphs Transformers Figures, which might come in handy if anyone is having trouble figuring out how to transform your second-hand figures. It might also help you figure out what parts are missing as the removable parts are often lost.
Animorphs Tobias to Hawk Transformer Instructions
Animorphs Jake to Bear Transformers Instructions
Animorphs Marco to Gorilla Transformers Instructions
Animorphs Marco to Beetle Transformers Instructions
Animorphs Jake to Tiger Transformers Instructions
Animorphs TV Series
Animorphs had a short run as a TV series on Nickelodeon. Series 1 had 20 episodes and the second series only had 6 episodes. The television show appeared remarkably low budget, but did make a few positive changes to the story, such as aging up the characters by a few years. This was of course a practical choice, regarding child labour in the film industry, allowing much more nighttime filming. In fact, much of the show looks like it was filmed at night, but it also appears that some of it was filmed during the night and then darkened to look like it’s at night.
Viewing Order of TV Series
Season 1 (20 episodes)
1. My Name is Jake – Part 1
2. My Name is Jake – Part 2
3. Underground
4. On the Run
5. Between Friends
6. The Message
7. The Escape
8. The Alien
9. The Capture – Part 1
10. The Capture – Part 2
11. The Reaction
12. The Stranger
13. The Forgotten
14. Tobias
15. Not My Problem
16. The Leader – Part 1
17. The Leader – Part 2
18. The Release
19. Face Off – Part 1
20. Face Off – Part 2
Season 2 (5 episodes)
1. Face Off – Part 3
2. My Name is Erek
3. The Front
4. Changes – Part 1
5. Changes – Part 2
6. Changes – Part 3
Animorphs Taco Bell, Pizza Hut & KFC Toys
As far as I can tell, Australia completely missed out on these promotions which occurred between 1998 and 1999. Luckily for me, I went to the USA in 1999 and actually got the Marco / Shark transforming figure from Taco Bell, which I still have somewhere.
The KFC toys were far less memorable. I love the colourscheme of it all, but it’s really just very generic toys with animorphs logos slapped on them.
The Taco Bell Animorphs toys were pretty cool, though the transforming is incredibly basic and it’s really just a kid hiding under the shell of an animal, rather than really morphing or transforming.
These “Animarkers” and “Anistampers” looked pretty cool. These were either pens or roller stamp toys. I really like the Yeerk one.
Buy Animorphs Art Prints
A modern collectable that we never would have been able to get when we were kids were these art prints of the Animorphs book cover art by artist David Mattingly. You can buy prints signed and numbered by him on his Etsy Store.
You can buy them here: https://www.etsy.com/au/shop/AnimorphsArtStore
The temptation to buy one or two of these is both very strong, but I don’t really have the wall space and I don’t think my partner would appreciate it. Choosing out of all these iconic covers would also make it incredibly difficult to narrow down to just one print too, so I’d probably end up ordering one of each character… My wallet is not ready.
Animorphs Video Games
Animorphs received 3 video games across Game Boy Color, PlayStation 1 and PC. Out of these I’ve only played the Game Boy Color game and the PS1 game. I’ll expand on this later.
Animorphs Game Boy Color Game
The Animorphs GBC game is a very poor Pokemon clone, but I still found it somewhat enjoyable despite its shortcomings. The worst part about it is that it has a password-based saving system with very long codes. Whilst I’m a big collector of genuine video games, this is one game that is better to pirate than to play in its original form. This allows you to quicksave and skip the tedious password system.
Unlike Pokemon, there’s no real type advantage for certain morphs against certain enemies or any strategy in the attacks except to use the strong moves. Instead of catching Pokemon, you battle animals and obtain their DNA to morph to use in battle. But if your morph runs out of HP, you lose it forever. This could make it the original Nuzlocke challenge. This means you have to go back and battle again to re-obtain it, dragging out the gameplay unnecessarily long.
As a big Nintendo collector, I generally insist to play games in their original form using genuine software and hardware. For this game, however, I found the only way to enjoy it was using an Everdrive cartridge, which allows you to load games from an SD card onto your Game Boy Color. The reason is, this pirate cartridge has a physical button for quickly saving the game, allowing you to bypass the bad passwords altogether. Even with this device, I still got stuck in a terrible minigame about 25-20% into the game. Overall though, I did enjoy it, I think the save function just ruined it.
Animorphs Shattered Reality on PS1
If you live in PAL regions, such as Australia like me, you might be surprised to hear that there was an Animorphs game on the Sony PlayStation 1. Animorphs Shattered Reality was only released on the PS1 in the USA and presumably due to its terrible reviews, never came out in PAL regions.
Animimorphs Shattered Reality on PS1 allows you to choose between a few of the characters and their exclusive morphs and run through some very linear and boring Crash Bandicoot-style gameplay with the occasional battle or mini-game. I played a few minutes of this on a ROM since it was never released where I live and it was incredibly boring. It really isn’t worth discussing.
Animorphs PC Game – Know The Secret
I haven’t played the PC game Amimoprhs Know The Secret but it does look to be the better game out of the 3 proper Animorphs video games. It is definitely better than the Flash games…
Animorphs Flash & Shockwave Games
I’ve been trying out the old Animorphs Flash and Shockwave games. For those of you bored enough to want to try these garbage games, I’ll add instructions on how to access them later.
Animorphs Match Masters Flash Game
The old Nickelodeon website (Nick.com) used to have this Flash game in 1999 that was simply a memory puzzle game. Here you can see me getting a correct pair of Rachel’s face. Each time you played this, the tiles would randomise but the image below appears to be the same from the two times I tested the game for this article. The images you turn over are all photos of the cast, or the Animorphs TV show logo. There is no meaning to the orange and green tiles, it’s just a pattern for the initial load, it doesn’t mean anything in relationship to the image pairs.
Animorphs Hawk Rescue Flash Game
A very basic side-scrolling shoot-em-up game allows you to control an always-moving Tobias to shoot enemies with maple-flavoured oatmeal. This projectile only has a short fire distance, so you have to be close to enemies to shoot them.
There are four levels with a different background, each adds another enemy that is worth more points than the other.
As I am playing this on a laptop, my screenshot button requires me to press two buttons at once, so I cannot get a screenshot of me shooting without getting someone else to help me, and this really isn’t worth the effort.
Below is the enemy screen before you reach the fourth level.
You are now shooting at Yeerks, Taxxons, Hork Bajir and Blade Ships. As I write this, I notice that the keys relate to letters that come into play later.
Here I had to take my hands off the mouse to take a screenshot and got hit by a Blade Ship. The characters in the books are lucky there weren’t 10 or so of those for them to battle with maple oatmeal.
After you get the four keys, you get 1 minute to solve this puzzle. You have to find the name of an animal using these four letters, then press the Enter button to rescue to the Animorphs.
Being the mental acrobat that I am, I figured out the name of the four-letter animal and saved my homies. No, I will not play again.
Animorphs Flash Slider Game
Slider games are very lazy mini-games. Nickelodeon had one of these puzzles on their website that lets you create a graphic of Rachel turning into a lion. Above you can slide the pieces around. Pressing the Solve button just does the puzzle for you and afterwards, it just lets you do the same puzzle again, which makes me think maybe this is the only graphic to solve in the game and I really don’t want to keep playing this to find out more.
Animorphs Mega Mix Scholastic Flash Music Game
For some reason, Scholastic produced a Flash game for Animorphs that allowed you to make some simple music beats and throw in some animal sounds as well.
Back when this was released, this would have been pretty cool to some people in the late 90s, but other than the animal sounds, this really wasn’t very Animorphs-related. I think the TV show had a bit of an electronic music vibe to it maybe but this was on the book’s website.
Above is a few seconds of absolute garbage I made.
Animorphs Yeerk Pool Shockwave Game
If you remember playing an Animorphs maze game on the Scholastic website back in the day, it was almost certainly this.
This game lets you run around a maze of different screens collecting keys, finding animals (morphs or other characters maybe) and rescuing gorillas with those keys whilst getting chased by a bald man with a white shirt and tan pants.
Here you can see me running into a trap where I don’t have the right key and I’m about to get caught by the bald dude. This game looks like it could take up most of your time out of any of these games, but is still very boring and not worth playing.
