I will forever respect Animorphs for tricking kids who are just really into animals to read a book series by going “Hey you, you daydream about what it’s like to be a dolphin or a bird or a wolf? Have I got a book for you!” and then slowly radicalizing them with 50+ books of “There are no winners in war. Whatever ‘victory’ you perceive comes at the cost of sacrificing your own morals and killing the part of you that is human. In the end you will resort to murder, torture and war crimes and the knowledge of what you have done will haunt you for as long as you live.”
So the amazing thing is that after the release of the last book, the author K. A. Applegate was interviewed and asked about why she wrote such a super dark ending for the series. She responded (I’m paraphrasing here, I read this when I was like 11) “This is what happens when kids are forced into war. There are no fairytale endings for them. And if that upsets you, then go to the polls and vote to prevent this from happening to real children.”
I got to ask her about that rebuttal years later at a book signing event for her newer One and Only series. She laughed and said that her publisher had no idea she would say that, and if they knew they probably would not have let her do so. But she genuinely meant what she said and was proud it left an impression that lasted 20+ years.
Support authors with real morals, guys. It’s not hard.
