hey so i’m kinda confused about the kids ages and all, like their aging throughout the series. i know they start off 13, and in 23 tobias turns 14, and by the end of the series theyre 16 but aside from the weird future alternate reality timeline book with jake, where it’s assumed he’s 15 they don’t really mention aging. do you know any of the books where their age or grade level behind middle school is explicitly mentioned, or do you have/can you make/is there some basic timeline out there?
The single unambiguous mention of age is in #53, when Jake says “I've fought them for more than three years. I was just thirteen when I started. I'm sixteen now.” Tobias does have a birthday in #23, but we don’t know which one. The fact that the five human kids all start in the same grade (#1), and that Ax is born within weeks of Tobias (Andalite Chronicles) means that “ages 13 to 16,” probably applies to all six of them.
In terms of which three calendar years we’re talking about... we don’t know, but the pop culture references and technology level would suggest it’s somewhere right around the turn of the millennium. My best guess comes from the fact that there is apparently a U.S. presidential election between the end of the war and Visser Three’s trial a year later. Ergo, my headcanon is that the war lasts from late fall of 1996 to early spring of 2000.
I don’t want to present this as the be-all end-all interpretation, though. It’s also possible that Cassie is working for a female president within a year of the war because Bush Jr. or Clinton got impeached and replaced. Just because Jake’s 13 at the start and 16 at the end doesn’t mean Marco didn’t skip a grade (making him younger) or Tobias didn’t repeat one (making him older). It’s just canon that the war is 3 years, Jake’s 13 when he starts and 16 when he ends, and that Star Trek: Insurrection (1998) and Star Wars: Phantom Menace (1999) are both in theaters during the war.
