Animorphs & Me
I was still the new kid when I saw my first Animorph book. I was sitting on the carpet in my grade 4 class and I didn’t know any of the other kids. It was time for “drop everything and read”, a moment when a sound would ring out over the entire school’s announcement system and everyone would react - balls stop bouncing in the gym, pencils stop scribbling on paper and we all sit where we are, pull out a book of our choice and read. That’s it. For 10 whole minutes. Usually this happened throughout I love to Read Month, usually February. This concept of Drop Everything and Read almost felt more consistent than the schools and classrooms that I attended in my elementary school years. It gave me a relationship permanence that I didn’t have with my peers at the time.
And in Animorphs I found my first social group that told me that different people are allowed to be friends, are allowed to be a group. It showed me that the most interesting things can happen when you have people with varied experiences come together with one common goal. It showed me that I too might one day stumble upon such a friend group, I too might have a super power, and I too might be able to save the world. My favourite component of these books, which were usually around 150 pages and intended for young adults and pre-teens, was that the narrator - or the perspective of person whose eyes we were looking through - changed every book. Their super power? Changing into any animal they can touch!! So not only was the narrator different, the animals habits, behaviours and possible perspectives were explored too. Imagine having a super power, having to fight aliens we an’t see, in a different adventure type scenario every single book??
CLICK HERE IF YOU WANT TO TURN YOURSELF INTO AN ANIMAL WITH THIS ONLINE MORPHING GENERATOR
It started with Jake, the one who felt too much pressure to lead a team in a moment he didn’t feel ready. He was a regular kid that felt a lot of social pressure to fit in in his day to day life in school. He taught me how we have to rise up and meet the moments we find ourselves in - and we don’t often get the luxury of “being ready”. He struggled with asking for help and struggled with learning how to delegate responsibility and share the load of leadership with others. Jake was pretty cool.
Next we went to Rachel, his cousin who was like a rock star. They often described her as being able to walk through a hurricane and it still looked like her hair was professionally done without a speck of mud on her clothes. On the inside of her popular outer shell was a ferocious and fierce warrior who was willing to put their body on the line to make sure we could all achieve victory. Intense.
Marco was next and he was Jake’s best friend. He was being raised by a single dad who was struggling with his mental health and was the comedian of the group. Marco was always using humour to cope and valued his friends as his chose family because of how hard things were at home. I related to Marco a lot especially his strategies of coping with his trauma and loyalty to the team. He’s the perfect leader of the revolution.
Cassie was next and she was a farm girl who loved animals more than people. She was Rachel’s best friend who was always gentle and kind to everyone, welcoming attitude and didn’t care for popularity or fashion. She also has a crush on Jake, so they have a little romance situation. Her perspective was impactful on me in such a way that I want to try to hold on to kindness and being welcoming - even as I do difficult, heart wrenching and emotionally exhausting work.
There was a literal Alien, Ax (full name Aximili Esgarouth Isthil, can’t believe I can remember that without googling it) who was the little brother of the Alien who bestowed the magical powers upon this group of human teens. He made a human form out of all the other teens combined and struggled saying human words. His exaggerated way of speaking informed the way that I, to this day, love playing with words.
Finally, my favourite character, his name was Tobias. I love him because he was a dreamer. He had troubles in his life and was a product of the child welfare system. He also loved being in an animal form so much - but that ended up hurting him. The limiti to their animal changing power was that they could only be in that form for 2 hours and then they had to turn back to human. If they didn’t they got stuck. And Tobias got stuck as a red-tailed hawk, and told his stories from the perspective of a former human, who has now become a full time hawk.
Pretty intense stuff eh? I wanted to share why these characters were important to me and how they taught me different lessons about myself and about leadership when I was growing up. Other series I liked were the Chronicles of Narnia & The Lord of The Rings. I also loved books about my own neighbourhood, especially April Raintree. Reading, it can literally take you away and allow your imagination to soar - so you when we are going about our lives, we can imagine so much more than what we see before us.
What book series shaped you when you were growing?
