TW: Attempted Suicide (briefly mentioned in this review, a fleshed out scene in the book)

Animorphs can collect the DNA of any animal they touch and bond with, filing it away for the perfect opportunity to transform into an elephant, a tiger, a flea. But you cannot stay in your animal form for over two hours, or you will be stuck in that form permanently. Tobias learned this the hard way. He used to be a middle schooler, a little nerdy, an outcast among his peers and even his family. Now he’s a red-tailed hawk, and the transition has had its ups and downs. Navigating his new body is an adventure in itself; but in addition, he and his friends are still struggling to hinder the Yeerts, an alien army of manipulative slug creatures who are trying to enslave humans (and any other species they can worm their way inside of – literally). The kids have found a hideout where the Yeerts store up on vital resources. If they can disrupt their spaceship, maybe the world will finally see the havoc the Yeerts have wrought on Earth and its people.

The Encounter, book three of The Animorphs series, is the most emotional so far. All three books take time to showcase its character’s feelings and reactions to the otherwordly events happening to their planet (and their bodies). But the first two books have been more plot-motivated, and this one, while still fast-paced, is very internal. Not only do we learn more about Tobias’s difficulties in adapting to his hawk persona, but we see his struggle between his two personalities – his hawk mind is as present as his human one is, and the more he is stuck in the hawk’s body, the more he forgets about being a boy. He is especially reluctant to give into hunting, afraid that the hawk’s fervor for a live dinner will isolate him further from his experience as a human. The isolation feels so severe that at one point he tries to brutally end his life. Luckily, his friends are there for him even if he eats the occasional cute and fluffy creature. I have learned that some consider Tobias a trans character, due to this internal conflict, and it’s a compelling head-canon! It also reminded me of The Sword in the Stone and The Dark is Rising, two books where boys turn into hawks.

I adore how much the series leans into the body horror of transformation. Bones crunching, eyes migrating to the sides of your head, and the struggle of controlling the animal’s mind is described vividly and sometimes grotesquely. If you hate that scene where Pinocchio and friends turn into donkeys, this is definitely not the series for you. I can’t wait to read the graphic novels and see how these moments are drawn. OH! A fun aspect of the original paperbacks, if you can get your hands on them, is that they have a little drawing in the bottom corner of the main character morphing into the animal as the book goes on, and it operates as a flip book! Very clever feature.