Um, I saw an argument about this and.... is Animorphs a kids or young adult series? It's really got me confused
Animorphs is a children’s book series. It’s written for children, marketed to children, adopts a childist perspective, and primarily discusses the concerns of children. It is not a young adult series, nor is it even a marginal case like Percy Jackson or Harry Potter.
Why is my stance on this so firm?
First of all, Young Adult as a marketing category (for fiction aimed at teens) didn’t even exist in the mid-1990s when Animorphs first came out. It wasn’t developed until the mid-2000s with works such as Twilight, Hunger Games, and Mortal Instruments. But even if we’re willing to go back and classify pre-YA works as being precursors (e.g. Eragon, Sisterhood of the Traveling Pants), then Animorphs still doesn’t fit the bill, because Animorphs too clearly is about childhood rather than adolescence.
The protagonists of Animorphs have non-alien goals that revolve around getting their homework done, living up to their families’ expectations, avoiding bullies, and figuring out their own genders and orientations. They’re scared of being separated from their parents (#7), of losing their sense of fun (#19), and of never being able to have lives outside of the war (MM1). These aren’t the hopes and fears of mid-adolescence; they’re the hopes and fears of late childhood. They’re not motivated by adolescent concerns like sex, rebellion, drugs like alcohol, independence from authority, or personal privacy. They don’t have adolescent worries about crossing the thresholds of adulthood, maintaining their ability to travel, choosing colleges or career paths, or being respected as independent adults. They’re child characters.
The Animorphs are children, and thus also don’t have the rights and freedoms of adolescents. They don’t drive, they don’t go on unsupervised dates, they don’t hold jobs, they have chores but don’t maintain households, they don’t plan their own futures more than a few weeks in advance, and they don’t have money beyond a few dollars here and there. Marco is a partial exception to all of those, but he’s the first one to admit that he lacks the skills to shop for food more filling than Peanut M&Ms (#5), to drive more than a mile without crashing (#28), or to manage money long-term (#14). Marco is cooking and shopping for his household out of necessity, and he’s doing it as an untrained child would rather than as an emerging adult would. Because he, like all the other Animorphs, has the knowledge and abilities of a child rather than a young adult.
The Animorphs come off like kids, with kids’ level of experience. None of them have heard of the Battle of Agincourt or the Battle of Trafalgar (MM3), all of them are more inclined to go “eew” than “ooh” on the rare occasions when talk turns to sex (#13, #43), and most of them are pretty terrible at electronics operations (#16, #20). Most of their battle strategies come from cartoons and video games, not formal martial theory. Nevertheless, the kids are treated as complex and valid individuals capable of both great good and great evil. That’s my oversimplified understanding of the childist perspective: that it focuses on the ways that society restricts and dismisses children, and takes the radical stance that children can be fully human members of society while still being fundamentally children at heart, without having them be mini-adults in all but name. Animorphs has a firmly childist perspective toward its own protagonists, and emphasizes that with the minor characters.
Because most adults treat the Animorphs like kids, refusing to respect their superior experience even when confronted with overwhelming evidence that these kids know what they’re doing. The Animorphs, by contrast, never stop respecting adults and adult authority. Most notably, the protagonists never ever stop referring to adults as “Mr. Tidwell,” “General Doubedday, sir,” “Aunt Naomi,” etc., even on occasions when they’re telling those adults what to do. The kids operate outside traditional power structures sometimes, but still view themselves as being subject to those power structures.
As a quick point of contrast, think about an in-between series like Harry Potter. The protagonists don’t just date but make out and have intense sexuality crises. They travel long distances without adults and are trusted to provide for themselves, especially in Deathly Hallows. They pivot away from “Professor Lupin” toward “Remus” in later books, and they tell off headmasters and Ministers for Magic alike. They make career choices, and lead social justice movements. They’re arguably more child than young adult when the series starts, but they’re also pretty clearly more young adult than child when the series ends.
[Image description: the spine and part of both covers of Animorphs #9. The Scholastic logo, a white book on a red background, is visible on the spine and front cover. The name “Scholastic” is visible on the front and back covers.]
The Scholastic name or logo appears — by my count — no less than eight times on a standard Animorphs book, including twice on the spine alone. That’s not just a marketing tactic. It’s a signal to librarians, teachers, and other children’s book curators that these books being listed under the “ages 8 to 12″ label isn’t arbitrary or accidental. These books have been evaluated by experts in the field, and deemed not only appropriate but engaging and also educational for children in that age bracket. These books use simple language, except when they occasionally use and then immediately define more complex terms like “thermal” or “singularity.” Their educational content focuses primarily on animal facts, with a moderate dash of history and good ol’ fashioned ethics, and that content is present in every book. A young adult series would be under no obligation to explain how gravity affects whales’ organ structure in the middle of an adventure (#27). I’m no expert, but I wholeheartedly agree: these books are appropriate, enjoyable, educational, and meaningful for kids to read.
These books have a lot of extreme content, which is probably the source of the confusion about the target audience. Because we live in a culture that simultaneously holds up the myth of children as innocent beings unaffected by violence, and devalues children’s culture through suggesting that any serious or impactful work MUST be meant for adults like us. But Animorphs is so good because it’s a series for kids, never in spite of that.
titsay
baratheonpilled
kianamaiart
yousharknotpass
turnnoffyourmind
theartofmadeline
