It's Animorphing Time: Book 4 - The Message

In this episode, gender is a construct.

The fifth book in the Animorphs series, The Message, takes place in the POV of Cassie aka THE VET. Cassie comes from the veterinarian family and loves horses. Cassie is unironically the horse girl. Cassie’s mom works at the zoo so this is how the gang has access to all that DNA to copy. The Message moves the main plot along more than the last book, The Encounter, which was quite the existential scare and ended with EXPLOSIONS. 

The Message starts with Cassie having recurring dreams of a voice coming from underneath the water. The gang is not sure what to do with this information as Cassie is the only one having dreams and getting called after to “be found.” 

That all changes when news footage (that the kids watch on a VHS TAPE) shows a metal piece of a ship washed up on shore. The gang puts together that the VOICE coming through to Cassie is most likely an Andalite in the ocean. Andalites are, of course, the alien race that was able to give the kids the ability to morph into animals. 

Between Cassie thinking Jake is cute and Marco making wisecracks, they know they won’t be the only people down at the beach. They also know that the Controllers (people controlled by the Yeerks) would most likely be looking down there as well. What ensues is the gang getting shot at with live rounds from firearms by the controllers on the beach. The 90s were a different time for kids literature. 

Cassie gets the idea that if they are going to swim underwater with speed and precision, they need to morph into dolphins. During this zoo trip interlude, we learn about Marco’s father who is a janitor and depressed. He watches TV all day and is emotionally distant from Marco. 

Side note: Animorphs was an inclusive series and I think it is cool that Applegate and Grant created characters off different backgrounds - providing representation for anyone reading this series. Not only skin color but income and family dynamics. Good stuff!

But back to morphing! 

I can’t help but pull text from the book again for the morphing scene. This one is long but boy, it is GOOD. Remember we are in the POV of Cassie

The first change was my skin. It lightened from brown to pale gray. It was like rubber, tough and springy. 

That was good. I wanted to hang on to my legs as long as I could. I wanted to change as many other aspects as I could before I had to drop down into the water.

I felt the odd crunching sound you get sometimes when bones are stretched or compressed. And right before my eyes - literally - my face bulged out and out and out still farther. 

“Oh man, that’s definitely not attractive,” Marco groaned from the shore. “Not a good look for you, Cassie.”

.

.

I didn’t have a mirror, but I could guess how gross I looked. I had this huge, long bottleneck sticking out of my otherwise normal face. My skin was gray rubber. And when I felt behind me with my rapidly shriveling hands, I could feel the triangular blade of a dorsal fin rising out of my spine. 

My arms were gone, replaced by two flat flippers, and I was now standing about ten feet tall, wobbling on my puny human-sized legs.

It was time to let the rest of the morph proceed. I surrendered my human legs. Instantly I fell face forward into the water.

I looked down and saw my tail. I was complete. The water was too shallow, though, and I was barely afloat. I kicked my tail, scraped across the sandy bottom, and finally surged out into the deeper water. (Pg. 58-59)

As they save whales as dolphins, Marco is mortally wounded. His tail is just about to fall off and he’s bleeding out. He cries out he doesn’t want to die as an animal and he doesn’t want to die out in the water like his mother did (she supposedly drowned in a capsized boat), Luckily the team knows that if you morph back into a human, the DNA reconstructs and heals all wounds. Marco survives but boy, what a terrifying scene. 

In order to get to where they think the signal or voice is coming from, the gang has to get farther out to sea but they can’t do so under the 2 hour limit. They decide to morph as seagulls, ride on a ship and then morph into dolphins where they think it’s the closest. 

After dangerously morphing off the side of a ship, the Animorphs swim down to find a glass-like dome and in it is what we would think of as a park. Large open area with vegetation and trees. But also crystals and blue colored flora. 

Upon entering the dome via a decompression/water draining chamber - they are met by an Andalite. This Andalite turns out to be gasp Elfangor’s late brother - Aximili-Esgarrouth Isthil. He becomes known as Ax and his ship crashed after battling the Yeerks in orbit. The Yeeks we come to find out drain planets of their resources and move on. Earth was next! After the kids explain Visser Three killed his brother and that they inherited these powers from said brother, Ax trusts them. 

In case you forgot what an Andalite looks like.

Narrowly escaping the Yeerks attack on the dome, the kids find themselves back on land with a plus one - an Andalite. It is at this point that millennials learned that gender is a construct and there are no rules to gender. 

“O-o-o-o-kay,” Jake said. “A few small adjustments needed. Ax, are you male or female?”

“I chose to be-be-be-be-be male.” He stopped suddenly, eyes wide. He was surprised by his mouth. It was not something Andalites understood.

“I chose male because I am male. Word. Male. Is that a good choice?......

“Male is fine,” Jake said. (Pg 147)

The book concludes with Cassie swimming with the dolphins as a dolphin feeling free and unburdened. 

This book was on the one that had the ad for you to be morphed if you sent in a picture of yourself. I still can’t get over sending pictures of children to strangers for them to alter but hey it was a different time. You can read my post on that here. 

Next month: The Predator