Books shelved under “Young Adult”

And so we’ve reached the ghostwriter era, with The Extreme delivering a fairly dull adventure to an exciting place: the Arctic.

There’s not actually much wrong with this book. The trouble is that it comes on the heels of a particularly strong moment in the series—the David trilogy and The Hork-Bajir Chronicles—and most stories would look boring in comparison. Unfortunately for a story called The Extreme, Marco and the other Animorphs don’t get…

It's 2016; can we stop pretending we don't judge books by their cover? Remix has amazing cover art—in particular, the way the back cover copy is arranged is a thing of beauty. Just look at it. If I hadn’t already wanted to read Remix after reading Non Pratt’s debut, Trouble, that back cover would change my mind.

I love that Remix is, at its core, about the best friendship between two girls. Yes, there…

This is an odd book. I'm pretty sure it’s good, but I’m not sure I liked it. It took me far longer to read Black Feathers than I usually take to read any book. Part of that was because I spent more time focused on other things over the past few weeks. Most of it, I think was avoidance. Joseph D’Lacey’s writing is good; don’t get me wrong. But I was never in a hurry…

Another Cassie book, more in the vein of #14: The Unknown than #19: The Departure. Applegate experiments with absurdism here With slightly more sophisticated humour than “hah hah, it’s an Andalite toilet!”—riffs on gender and politics and, of course, bureaucracy—The Suspicion holds a little more appeal on the comedic front. Also, the story is better, even if the ending is a hot mess.

Instead of Area 51 and horses, this time we get…

Wow, reading some of the popular reviews on Goodreads, it seems like Hexed is a love-it-or-hate-it kind of novel. Except, of course, I have to be difficult: I neither loved nor hated this. I can see why people would come down in either camp. Michelle Krys delivers an unlikable protagonist, Indigo, who nevertheless tries to be better in the midst of a harsh world (high school) made all the harsher by a shadowy war where …

I’m not sure how much of a compliment this is, what with the low opinion I have of most CW shows (Supernatural notwithstanding), but Zeroes is one of the first superhero novels I’ve read that could be a CW show. It reminds me a lot of the well-intentioned but ill-fated attempts like Alphas (which I know wasn’t the CW, but that’s neither here nor there), in that it follows the standard formula: a group…

Back on the Animorphs re-read train with The Pretender, our first Tobias book in what feels like forever. Tobias leads the Animorphs in rescuing a captured free Hork-Bajir child; meanwhile, he has to deal with the usual teenage angst: some woman claiming to be his cousin wanting to take care of him, a letter from his departed father to be read on his birthday, and another red-tailed hawk muscling in on his prime…

What happens when you meet someone online and you’re struck by a sudden need to help them, but they live on the other side of the world and don’t speak English? Jen Wang and Cory Doctorow ponder the intricacies that teenagers have to deal with, often on their own, in our globalized world. There’s a lot to like about In Real Life, so let’s get into it.

Firstly, the obvious: this is a story…

Instalments like this one make me sad that regular Animorphs novels were sandwiched into bite-sized morsels that …

… wait, let me restart this with a metaphor less likely to make me hungry.

Instalments like The Hork-Bajir Chronicles demonstrate what K.A. Applegate can do when she can write longer-form stories. The shorter Animorphs novels have their advantages—they are easy to read, almost episodic, and obviously we wouldn’t have as many of them if they were…

I’m trying to be sparing with my five stars in this series, but oh man … Rachel. Applegate just always breaks my heart with her, and The Solution is yet another perfect example. In the conclusion to the David trilogy, Rachel is instrumental in implementing the titular “solution” to the Animorphs’ problem. It is ironic that a human enemy, rather than a Yeerk one, forces the Animorphs to be at their coldest yet.

Let’s just…

What is this I can’t even.

#21: The Threat strips away any remaining pretensions that this is a “children’s” series. This is YA at its grittiest. Long before we had people volunteering themselves as tribute and running through mazes and choosing which Personality House they belong to, we had David the Traitor betraying the Animorphs because he is a terrible human being.

We’ve seen this theme before in the book. Applegate reminds us that humans…

So in the last book we were down an Animorph, sort of, and in this book we gain an Animorph, sort of. The Discovery is the start of the Third Age of Animorphs: the stakes are higher, the action is more intense, and the consequences are further reaching than we’ve ever seen.

(One day I hope to have a successful sideline as a writer of “next week” TV promos.)

If memory serves, this is all…

You might as well subtitle this book Cassie Has the Worst Day Ever. Literally. Take a look at these totally not-at-all-made-up chapter titles to get an idea of how terrible Cassie’s day was:

Chapter 1: Cassie Quits the Animorphs Chapter 2: Cassie Has the Most Awkward Exit Interview Ever Chapter 3: Cassie Makes a Friend! Chapter 4: Cassie’s Friend is Evil! Chapter 5: Cassie and Friend Nearly Get Eaten by the Leopard Chapter 6:…

Somebody told me you had a boyfriend Who looked like a girlfriend That I had in February of last year

That’s not from (Re)cycler; that’s a Killers quotation. But it’s apt for the plot of this book: Jill, who for four days of the month is Jack, moves to New York. As she tries to get used to independence and figure out who she wants to be, shenangians ensue. Soon tensions run high as…

I want to say that I don’t remember these books being as dark as they seem now, but I think that would be a lie. Young!Kara recognized the darkness—but for me, at that age, that wasn’t even the draw. I was more about the adventure and the heroism of these young characters—the science-fictional elements were really the coolest thing. Now when I read Megamorphs #2: In the Time of the Dinosaurs I’m focusing more on…

I have a real soft spot for The Decision, because it is so awesome.

I remember the “Animorphs get pulled into Z-space” book from my childhood reading of the series—but I didn’t remember it coming so early. I loved the whole concept. Indeed, while not quite as long as the Megamorphs books, I’d argue that the plot of The Decision is just as cinematic and huge as any of those books—and maybe superior to…

Haters gonna hate, but I don’t care: oatmeal is a fantastic weakness. I mean, think about some of the weaknesses enemies or superheroes have had in other stories. Kryptonite? Water? Tricking them into saying their names backwards? Country music? Oatmeal is a legit weakness—and Applegate very specifically restricts it to maple and ginger instant oatmeal. Throw in the additional snag that it doesn’t kill a Yeerk, just renders the Yeerk mad and keeps it from…

Yo dawg, I heard you like Internet sites.

The plot basically goes like this: Jake is online, back in the days when most of the people online were nine-year-olds and 40-year-olds on the prowl for nine-year-olds. He discovers a Yeerk website and lurks in the chatroom, wondering if these people are for real or if it’s a trap. The Animorphs decide to investigate by raiding the offices of the AOL analogue that holds all the…

Marco books might be the best books if you’re looking to jump into Animorphs. After fifteen books that might very well be the case. Applegate, cognizant of course that random books from this series would end up on library shelves the world over, with unconscionable gaps as a result of poor funding and attrition, tries her best to summarize the key points at the beginning of every book. But Marco does it best: succinct,…

Meehhhhhhhhhh?

I’m not sure what prompted me to grab a book so obviously in the dystopian YA camp. I guess it’s that bad habit of reading widely—I mean, it’s great in the sense that I discover books I love I might not have read otherwise. But it means I tend to read a lot of books that I find mediocre even when I know others are going to love them. It’s one thing to rip…