Richard's Animorphs Forum
Animorphs Section => Animorphs Forum Classic => Topic started by: bittersweet on November 20, 2012, 07:26:03 PM
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Okay was doing more thinking , and I wondered why animorphs is classified as a children's book. With all the sacrifices, the questioning of morality. What's wrong and right. Blood & gore. Death. How could little children understand all of that. The way k. A Applegate captures the true essence of war. Showing how it changes people afterwards. That in winning a war , you lose alot in the process. Its far from a children's book in my eyes. :-\ :huh:
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It definitely stretched the boundaries, and I'm quite certain a TV series would never be able to go into the same detail. The main characters were young, and it was meant to be read by a young audience. I don't know exactly they scholastic allowed it to be in the children's section.
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I suppose it didn't really touch on the deeper, darker, more graphic aspects until later. You feel for the characters, but there isn't really any really high-octane nightmare fuel or anything in the early books (in tvtropes-speak) until maybe until the David arc or slightly beyond. It walks the border between Children and Teens, but I'd say it started out as a children's series (I remember being hooked onto it when I was 10 or 11 or so).
It's a great, rather fun (if at times slightly scary) read for children. At the same time, reading and re-reading the series throughout my teenage years and coming back now as a 20 year old, I find out that almost every time, I catch on something that I would have missed out on when I was younger.
At 10, I was just generally having fun with all the animal descriptions and reading the book at face value (and learning how to write well, heh). I remember being hugely excited, though confused by some things. As a child, I didn't understand some of the more... ugly things (mature themes), like death, war, sacrifices, etc. They were just passing words, theories, if you will, with no real weight or impact. What I remember learning was about how everyone will have a different point of view. How differences in who you are don't make what you think any less important. How friends stick up for each other.
As a teenager, I looked a little deeper and saw the shades of grey, morality, sacrifices, the greater good, etc. In other words, stuff that I might have caught but didn't understand as a child, including war and related themes, which I linked back to what I caught as a child. And I think there's something in there for very age group and every reader, new or returning.
I think that RE stretching the boundaries, KA wrote the series across 6 years. Towards the end, I suppose she wanted to keep the same audience engaged in Animorphs.
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I guess K.A.A wanted to bring those mature aspects of life like the dark side of war, trust, loyalty etc to the audience she was writing for, teens to young adults, in a more approachable form. That way I'm reading it now and analysing it and the way she's handled all that is brilliant! I try to ape her writing style in my English assignments these days, it's so good ;D
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She got into the dark parts pretty early, she just did it in a very.... easy(?) way. She talked about the debate between avoiding war and risking a larger more costly one for the trouble, or going into them early and risking an unnecessary one in book 7 for instance, and touched on whether it is more ethical to kill someome with bullets and bombs, or in the anis case teeth and claws, then with a chemical in the oatmeal story. But she manage to do it in a way that was so natural that the reader might not even notice while most authors force it so much it comes off as contrived. I think they're teenager books, but adults can get a lot out of them too, andshe threw a southpark rereference in one. That had to be aimed at a crowd older than the books were supposed to be for.
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That's partially why we still talk and discuss these books today, their so beyond the average schoolastic book in maturity and....plot. Sorry, discussing plot with the animorphs is a little bit hard since I read the SECOND Helmacron book.
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It was a great series, though it definitely had problems. I think it was mostly in the second half, though the first half had problems too. Still obviously it was a great series. Why else would there be an active forum ten years after the series ended.
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Coz we lovely lot of RAFians know just what to read :)
Hey, Harry Potter was supposed to be a children's book. That said, I'm guessing the definition of "children's book" is one that doesn't have any outright adult material here and there, which both series didn't have.
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Because violence is fine as long as you don't have two consenting adults making love to each other.
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I always thought it had something to do with the fact that the Animorphs themselves where children.
And really that holds for a lot of literature: little kid books typically feature either little kids or ageless, made-up creatures as the stars, "young adult" books teens. If it doesn't star an adult it's not an adult book. Not always the case, but I think that contributes to the default.
If you changed nothing of Animorphs except the school elements and implied they were working adults, it probably would have been considered "adult"-and by that I mean in the general sci-fi/fantasy section
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I think Animorphs works as a children's series because kids generally ignore content that they don't understand and/or are not interested in and pay attention to the stuff they do enjoy and are able to pay attention to. I think a lot of people didn't even really notice how dark some of it was until they were more or less capable of understanding it. That allows it to be enjoyable as a kid and as an adult. Also, the fact that Animorphs generally didn't talk down to its audience made it a better and more memorable read.
I guess that although it did discuss darker themes, it was ultimately in a manner that was suitable for kids. I think that kids can handle a lot more of darker stuff than people sometimes realize.
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*blink blink*
Hi, I don't think I've run into you on here before. Then again, I've been off for awhile and am still not going to be too active until classes let out.
Yeah, I always think of Goosebumps when talking about Animorphs and Scholastic. That's a children's series. But I still think Animorphs would be a children's series even if the characters were adults and nothing else changed. But it's kinda like Pixar. It's still good for adults, except Animorphs has a lot more violence.
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I don't post very often. Usually I can't think of much to say.
Also, I hadn't been on here for a while due to being busy. Nice to meet you. :)
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But it's kinda like Pixar. It's still good for adults, except Animorphs has a lot more violence.
All the better for adults then, especially young adults!
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I think mostly it's because children can handle more than a lot of people give them credit for.
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When I first read the series I couldn't imagine adults reading it... I still kinda can't (because all of them that do it are crazy) do that because the concept is put together for children.
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*Imagines self, 30 years old in a standoff against the police, barricaded inside a small apartment filled with K.A. Applegate books*
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I'm pretty sure it has already been said, but that is the whole POINT of the series. To push the boundaries and to treat children like functioning humans, instead of little kiddies who can't think past what is for breakfast. I think Applegrant very carefully walked that line, very intentionally. I guess they just had some like-minded editors at scholastic.
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I think that Animorphs are considered childrend book 'cause the general idea is about aliens, superpowers, science fiction, animals, and the protagonists are teens.
The most childish thing IMHO is the representetion of the Yeerks as a race of brutal, ruthless, evil beings, which seem to hate one another - I don't understand how they can cooperate for an invasion, in these conditions - and Visser III, that is a very stereotyped villain, he seems to act as if he were playing the role of the Bad Guy, bad just to be bad.
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IDK, the yeerk's command structure was similar to the USSR. Highly centralized, little room for lower level peons to take initiative, high fear of failure and punishment for it, they worked fairly well, except for the collapse after about 80 years and terrible living standards. But I definetely agree about Visser 3, for someone resourceful enough to climb the ranks that far, he was pretty much an idiot.
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When I was reading the Animorphs books as a kid I remember the most enjoyable aspect of it being that I would daydream that I was an Animorph and had the power to morph.. I just remember thinking it would be so cool to morph into any animal I wanted. I was really lonely as a kid and sometimes I'd just imagine that I was an extra member of the Animorphs and they were real and I was helping them save the world. 8)
And sure, there were definitely parts of the books I didn't understand, but I'd just skim past it as most kids do when they're reading something past their level.
I think this series is enjoyable at all ages as long as you have an open mind, and dreams of adventure, fantasy, and science fiction, stuff that's beyond reality... because let's face it, taking reality too seriously in itself is enough to drive you insane. :o
And yeah Visser 3 was pure evil and a cliché super villain but why not? :)
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I must admit, I was much more emotionally pulled by the series when i was about 19-20 than when I was about 9-10. Back when I was younger, it was more about the action and aliens, now it's much more about questioning what is the right thing to do in difficult situations.
I suppose that's what makes something good: It appeals in more ways than one to different demographics.