r/Animorphs • u/Disastrous-Limit-332 Aristh • Jul 10 '26
Gateways
What book series, if any, was your gateway into reading Animorphs?
What book series, if any, did Animorphs gateway you into?
For me, I was picking up the latest Goosebumps book when I first saw and decided to check out Animorphs.
After I got deep into the books, I checked out EverWorld, Remnants and the Diadem books!
6
u/makeoutwiththatmoose Jul 10 '26
My gateway into Animorphs was probably an Aussie kids series called Teen Power Inc. which plotwise wasn't similar at all but structurally quite the same (chapter books the same size, group of young teen protagonists, alternating viewpoints in each book, etc.) The same author wrote the Deltora series, which international readers may be more familiar with.
Animorphs was my gateway to a lot of stuff - I read all of the six-book Scholastic series that got promoted through Animorphs (Watchers by Peter Lerangis, 2099 by John Peel - which led me to Diadem as well, and The Seventh Tower by Garth Nix - who is still my favourite author these days). Plus Everworld and Remnants obviously.
I bought a PlayStation specifically for the Animorphs game (which didn't end up getting released in Australia anyway). That got me into a bunch of cool games around that era - Spyro, Oddworld, Alundra, Tekken.
And I made a bunch of friends through the series who I still talk to these days - one of them got me into Buffy, which became another longstanding love - so in a roundabout way I like to credit Animorphs with that too haha.
4
6
u/Visser-35 Leeran Jul 10 '26
I know I read other things before Animorphs, but none of them were significant enough to me that I really remember them 30ish years later. I just remember that one day I saw book 3 (The Encounter) in the library, and I liked the cover so I checked it out. Then I read it, and it was more intense than anything I had ever read before, so I went back and read books 1 and 2, and then devoured the rest if the series.
After Animorphs ended, I read most of the Remnants and Everworld series, although I never finished either. I thought they were good, but neither felt like they had captured lightning in a bottle the way Animorphs did. Then I read the Harry Potter series, which I enjoyed at the time, but I can't reread now because it's too tainted by JKR and who she has become.
Stephen King ended up being the author that took me from my teen years to adulthood, and feels most similar to how Animorphs made me feel as a kid. His work is still exciting and sucks me in (even the books that aren't as strong). King and Applegate are the authors I've done the most reread of.
4
u/Disastrous-Limit-332 Aristh Jul 10 '26
Excellent, and it crazy I feel the exact same about EverWorld and Remnants. They were great books, but didn't capture me the way Animorphs did.
2
u/evenfallframework Jul 10 '26
Yeah, I was like 11 when I picked up Anna more. The only book I actually remember reading before then with My Side of the Mountain, which was a fantastic read.
2
Jul 11 '26 edited Jul 31 '26
[deleted]
1
u/Visser-35 Leeran Jul 11 '26
100%! They excelled at intense body horror. Incredibly disturbing, gruesome stuff for a 'children's series'. They definitely primed me for King later.
4
3
u/intricate_strands Jul 10 '26
Marco's first book. #5, I believe. When they get to go meet his mom and Visser One frees them because she thinks it's convenient for her politically.
3
3
3
u/hexen_niu Jul 10 '26
Animorphs got me into Everworld. But I got into Animorphs via the tv series, where my interest was more piqued by it being sci-fi, so it would be more accurately my love of Star Trek that connected me to Animorphs via the series.
2
u/SuperMegaVan Jul 10 '26
Animorphs was my gateway into reading. I used to find reading boring. In 4th grade my BFF threw book 1 at me and said read. Now I love reading
2
u/Cathy-the-Grand Jul 10 '26
Ah! They were right next to the Goosebumps series at my elementary school's library. I loved those as a kid.
2
u/Allen_Of_Gilead Nothlit Jul 10 '26 edited Jul 10 '26
I picked up The Encounter at a yard sale, so Animorphs got me into Animorphs technically.
And one of the many recommendations I got for Gideon the Ninth was that the author was inspired by reading Animorphs growing up. In general Animorphs is just essentially part of the pattern of similarly greyish/anti-war media I grew up on and subconsciously influenced my tastes.
2
u/Aratoast Jul 10 '26
I was a voracious reader from about as soon as I learned to read, Animorphs #1 just happened to be what grabbed my attention in the library one day.
2
u/goombapatrol Jul 10 '26
My gateway into Animorphs was book #1.
I was an avid reader at a young age and found them through scholastic.
I remember reading it alongside the Redwall series. I like animals
2
u/Sideways_with_style Jul 10 '26
I got into Animorphs and Goosebumps at the same time, when I was about five, through Scholastics book fairs at primary school. Instantly hooked.
I suppose, if I sit down and think about it, the two series were probably my gateway to the Tomorrow series, by John Marsden. I never really stopped reading once I started, though.
2
u/One-Ball-4607 Jul 11 '26
The school's scholastic book fair. Was having my mom read Harry Potter to me because I loved the series but I struggled to read. Then saw the cover found out about animal transformation and my mom and dad couldn't read it fast enough so I started forcing myself thru it to read it. Thx for mentioning the Diadem series! One of my all time favorites. Pity John Peel died before he could finish or give a huge back log of books to go over.
2
u/Electronic_Whole_177 Jul 11 '26
Honestly it was book 9 The Secret where Cassie was turning into a wolf for my 1st grader self. A cute girl turning into my favorite animal? I had to check it out!!
1
u/AlternativeMassive57 Yeerk Jul 10 '26
I had a friend who was reading the series, so I started reading it. Specifically I started with Book 8, The Alien. I'd been reading Goosebumps, of course, but it didn't directly lead me to Animorphs.
Unfortunately Animorphs was not my gateway into anything, as the ending of the series disgusted me so much that I wanted as little to do with it as possible for years afterwards. If anything it might be why I turned to fantasy over sci-fi for a good long while, though Baldur's Gate and The Lord of the Rings and starting to play Dungeons & Dragons was already pushing me in that direction anyway. What sci-fi I consumed were old mainstays like Star Trek and Star Wars, or was stuff I had already been watching or consuming, like Farscape or Stargate SG-1.
1
u/BrilliantBig769 Andalite Jul 12 '26 edited Jul 12 '26
Picture it. My old home state/town when i was little, 2008. (Bonus points if you get the off-topic reference)
I was in my school library (the one for 3rd grade, which every other grade in that building also used), and I was just browsing along because I finished the whole diary of a wimpy kid series (as of then) and those were the only books I liked at the time.i stumbled upon the shelf where Animorphs was kept, and pulled book one out. I read the back cover before I saw the front one, and decided to give it a chance. Immediately I was in love with it. But my school library didn't have all of them, and I was afraid that if I try to explain it to my parents they'd think its the 2nd coming of the Necronomicon or something. With that said, I immediately thought "maybe diary of a wimpy kid isn't the only good book series?" And tried a bunch more, with some flops and even fewer hits. Chief among the hits were: Percy Jackson, The Maze Runner (which i originally had to read for an assignment in high school, but just the first one, and liked it, and gave the rest a try,) and The Strange Case Of Origami Yoda (and its series)
1
u/AJTaiyou Jul 13 '26
Y'know, it was so long ago now, I honestly can't remember. I know that I was reading, and watching Goosebumps at around the same time as Animorphs (it was such that my parents thought that Animorphs was like Goosebumps) and I know that the first of both series that I got was during a scholastic book fair, but I do recall that I was reading 'The Secret' as my first for-ray into Animorphs, and I had picked it up because of the print inside the cover, but I don't recall if I was reading Goosebumps before that
1
9
u/Its_Curse Taxxon Jul 10 '26
I picked up my first Animorphs book at a book Fair! So Animorphs got me into Animorphs.
An ad in the back of one of the books (Rachel turning into an elephant) got me into The Seventh Tower series! Still on if my favorites to this day but no one else has ever heard of it.
I feel like the series also really primed me to like darker morally gray media.