Image via Wikipedia

The Amazing Applegate

During the later years of primary school, I had begun to shy away from reading. Being outside and playing took up more of my time than lying in bed with my mother while she read to me. I picked up a book from my school library when I needed to achieve Accelerated Reader points but never truly read for enjoyment, except for my small obsession with Nancy Drew Mysteries. Yet, my literary love received a new awakening and a jump start with the arrival of a Scholastic Book Fair at Margaret Newton Elementary School—a beautiful display of shiny, new books nestled in my library.

On my class’s day to visit the array of books laid before us, I was jumping with excitement. Something about owning a book instead of merely borrowing it made my heart beat faster with a sense of thrill in the air. Since blue was my favorite color, those special hues usually caught my eye first. My gaze wandered over each of the shelves until one in particular stood out. It was a lighter shade of blue, almost like the sky, and had a picture of a young boy transforming into a bright green lizard that greatly contrasted with the blue of the cover. I quickly skimmed the summary on the back about a group of kids and their part in holding off an alien invasion of Earth, and I was immediately hooked. For the following months and even years, I was constantly collecting the Animorphs series by K. A. Applegate every time a new one was released. I had finally returned to my deep passion for literature because of this author and her genre.

Image via Wikipedia

Transitional phases are some of the hardest ages for which to write. For now, most people are focusing primarily on literature for young adults since the teenage years usually show a drop in time spent reading. However, the shift from easy-readers to chapter books is a huge change in itself. A person is slowly starting to discover his or herself as a reader by finding favorite authors and preferred genres. If a writer can command a juvenile audience, it can easily be assumed that he or she is truly a great author. Katherine Alice Applegate can most certainly be considered to be one of those astounding writers.

She was born in Michigan in 1956 with her three other siblings as well as a menagerie of animals in her household. Applegate moved to several different states throughout her life, including Texas, Florida, and California, while she worked many odd jobs from being a typist to a waitress and even a veterinarian’s assistant. During her random dabbles in different careers, she still always knew she wished to be a writer as it allowed her the freedom to go anywhere and do anything without too much trouble. However, she only dedicated herself to the craft once she truly understood the commitment necessary for such a task by being an avid reader since she has no college degree or formal training.

Despite her very humble beginnings in the literary realm, she has certainly made a bang. Applegate has written over one hundred books. Her list of works can seem like it is sporadic with her endeavors writing adult romance novels, Disney pop-up books, and even a few Sweet Valley High novels. Her real fame did not begin to show until she broke into the world of her own series though. Between Animorphs, The Remnants, and Everworld, Applegate was able to truly delve into the mind of her middle-school audience and made a name for herself in the process. She has several strengths that are quite obvious, particularly in her first series Animorphs, which make her an ideal children’s author.

Taking the science fiction adventure genre and melding it with that of animals, Applegate brings Animorphs to life. Adolescents that can acquire the DNA of any animal they touch in order to defend their world from the vicious body-snatching Yeerks is an extremely new take on the concept of alien invasions (Heppermann, 1998). Yet, Applegate makes the situation seem entirely plausible by taking a normal concept and twisting it slightly. Juvenile children in middle school are under a constant barrage of information about how their lives and bodies are soon to be changing. The young characters have the same thing happening to them—it is out of their control but still an astounding experience. Also, adding realism to the lives of her characters, especially in the form of homework and family obligations, helps to keep readers more interested than they would about a totally outlandish science-fiction story. One can even learn from the books since Applegate puts extensive research into the animals that she uses in her stories so that her readers can become more aware of the animals around the world. She also puts the same amount of effort and realism in her other series as well. In Everworld, as the cast of characters wander around each different land on foot, surviving on the food and drink that they are given by the societies they meet whether they are Vikings, Aztecs, or Arthurian knights, they long for things that real people might want if they were stuck in the same situation. One character named Christopher even requests a glass of ice cold milk even if he had to exchange his mom for it as the group goes for three days with nothing but dirty river water under the hot sun.

One of Applegate’s most amazing skills as an author is her ability to truly pull her readers into her story through vivid descriptions. When reading Animorphs, she allows the reader to experience what it might be like to change into a different creature, crunching bones and surrounding objects shrinking or growing depending on the size of the animal one becomes, and even gives a glimpse into the mind of these animals since the book claims that a portion of the animal brain remains when one of the characters changes. The Remnants has extensive detail about the spaceship in which they travel in search for a new home to the point where the reader can actually memorize the layout of the vessel. In Everworld, a reader gets assaulted by the senses that Applegate includes in her stories, going into great detail about the sights, smells, and wants that the characters experience. This particular strength of hers is vital to her success because of the science-fiction/fantasy genre in which she writes. Since a great deal of imagination is required for these types of stories, a writer must go to great lengths to draw a picture for the reader so that he or she can understand what is happening and what the different creatures look like in this alternate reality that is created.

Applegate is also quite gifted in her ability to make the reader seem involved in the story. Her style generally has one of the main characters of the story telling his or her tale personally to the reader. Instead of having her audience look down on the story as a person looking down from a balcony to a scene below, the reader is allowed to personally follow a character through his or her exploits—facing the danger, soaring with the exhilaration, and meeting with everyday challenges. Also, in order to really get into the minds of her juvenile readers, Applegate frequently involves contemporary culture in her stories such as instances when she brings in ideas about dates to coffee shops and allusions to fashion trends. Her attempts to include popular fads really helps her juvenile readers feel as if they are reading a book that they might write themselves, linking back to her style of having her young characters narrate the books.

However, many people are not especially impressed with Applegate’s writing. Some critics feel that her weaknesses as an author outweigh her strengths—just as all writers have a handful nay-sayers for some reason or another. Her use of popular culture seems to be a particular pet-peeve of some readers. They feel that she overuses such techniques by making references to trends and fads in every chapter of her Animorph books since the characters are supposed to be relatively regular young people in the present day with the only major difference being their special powers and the secret alien invasion of Earth.

As far as the literary aspects of Applegate’s style, some complain about the character development in her Animorph and The Remnants stories. Her casts generally stay the same throughout her series since she mainly focuses on the plot and the problems that her characters face during their journeys. Characters are given a persona at the beginning of the series from which they do not stray. The same type of relationships always exist between people. Friends, loves, and enemies can always be expected and anticipated by the reader. It is possibly her way to simplify the reading level of her books.

Finally, the weakness that can become quite tedious even to the most avid readers is linked to Applegate’s numerous works. With so many titles to her name, Applegate is one of the most prolific juvenile writers in the world. However, since she does write so many books, mostly as different volumes of her varying series, she must provide background material about each continuing story. While this method helps readers who are trying to catch up or do not follow the series from the beginning, it has a tendency to make her writing appear formulaic with its introduction, information on how things came to be, problem, mission, then ending. The Animorph series, not including the spin-off stories, was composed of fifty-four books, meaning the same process can become old very quickly to some readers and critics. Once the series was finished, Applegate even lamented not being able to write the phrase “My name is…” ever again in an essay addressed to her fans about the end of the series and the beginning of The Remnants.

Every author has strengths and weaknesses, but the determination of a writer’s popularity is based on which side is more prominent. Katherine Alice Applegate has her downfalls like all authors. However, the type of books that she writes are perfect for her audience. She was on the frontier of the emergence of the science fiction and fantasy genres for middle-school audiences, which put her in the position to act as a pillar for the current explosion of juvenile literature. The adventure and imagination involved with her science-fiction and fantasy works are the ideal method of reaching the juvenile-aged children who are trying to find their “reader-selves” as they make the transition from easy books to chapter books. Applegate engages her readers to the point where they can become interested in reading as more than an obligation so that they become better educated and imaginative citizens of the world.