The Invasion; or, the book that made me want to read below my RL in middle school

I haven't done a throwback review for a while, so I thought I might as well do it right. If you have not heard of Animorphs, you pretty much need to get up, leave whatever building you're in and get to the nearest book seller or library and pick up The Invasion, by K.A. Applegate (though, please be enviro-friendly and turn off the computer first). This book is everything I remembered and more. I've read a buttload of books for kids written in first person that are transparent and definitely feel like adults frontin' and pretending to be kids. With The Invasion, I felt as if Jake was telling me about the Yeerks and Andalites and the whole gang.

For those of you living under a rock for the past twelve years, Animorphs are a group of five kids that walk through an abandoned construction site and receive the gift of morph-technology from a dying Andalite. The Andalite, Elfangor-Sirinial-Shamtul, details the on-going battle taking place secretly inside the skulls of their fellow man all around them, between mortal minds and Yeerks. What is a Yeerk? Why, it's a mind-controlling, parasitic slug, of course! Throughout The Invasion, the five children that dub themselves the Animorphs must figure out if they want to fight the good fight to save humanity or step back and just be regular kids.

As for readability, I'll let you decide after viewing these pictures:



That is certainly a dog-eared copy (which, considering which text this is, is quite amusing in and of itself, but I'm just sayin').



Me in the library: "I think this is the first book in the series, let me check the spine to double check... Oh."




"Hey, is this a new-fangled monocle?"



"Gasp! It's the back cover of the book! I don't remember it being see-through!!?!"