SUMMARY

When Tobias, Jake, Rachel, Marco and Cassie were given the ability to morph, they were also given one very important warning: Never stay in a morph for more than two hours. But Tobias stayed in his morph for too long. Now he's a hawk -- with a boy's mind -- forever. And he's starting to forget what he looked like. He's losing control, and wants to give in to the hawk brain inside him. Tobias knows he can't give up, but he's spotted a rat down below. He turns in midair and plummets down to the earth. He's focused. He's determined. He strikes...

Released: August 1996 Pages: 154 Cover Art by David B. Mattingly

Front Cover (Hi-Res) Inside Cover (Hi-Res)

 

ADDITIONAL / ALTERNATE COVERS

U.S. Inside Cover	Japanese Cover	U.K. Cover
German Cover	French Cover

TRIVIA

ANIBASE: One of the most common questions asked by fans when this book came out was, "Is that Jake on the cover?" Nope, it sure isn't. When the model was hired to portray Tobias, he had blond hair, just as the character was described in the books. But then the model showed up at the photo shoot with brown hair! Since he was already under contract, he had to be used, and K.A. started writing that Tobias had dirty blond hair to compensate. ANIBASE: For this book, K.A. Applegate went and hung out with hawk trainers at the Raptor Center at the University of Minnesota to learn more about how hawks live and act. ANIBASE: K.A. on why she chose a red-tailed hawk morph for Tobias to be trapped in: "Tobias' form was chosen because red-tails are among the most common hawks in the US. I liked thinking that kids driving with their folks across Kansas or wherever would daydream that they were seeing Tobias. Probably should have made him a turkey buzzard, they're so ubiquitous. I knew right from the start I would trap Tobias in morph, by the way, never a doubt. Had to be. I knew it would drive some readers crazy, but I also knew they'd want to know more." Tobias, and later Ax, were the two main characters in the series who got the least amount of numerical books to narrate. The reason for this came from Scholastic, rather than K.A. They didn't think that kids would be able to relate as well to an alien character, or to a kid trapped as a hawk. As a result, they both got their books in rotations of every 10 books, rather than the 5 like everyone else. Tobias got all the 3's in the series (#3, 13, 23, etc), while Ax got all the 8's (#8, 18, 28, etc). However, as it turned out, the books for Tobias and Ax were some of the fan's favourites, so both Ax and Tobias were brought into the equal rotation with the rest of the Animorphs near the end of the series (starting in #41: The Familiar). While all of the regular numerical Animorph book covers were made by David B. Mattingly, the first two books were created by Peter Bollinger (#1) and Tim O'Brien (#2). Also interesting to note is that the models didn't begin to show up in full body shots until David B. Mattingly started doing them with #3, where they would show up in full loosely clothed outfits (conflicting with what the books told us about the Animorphs never being able to wear anything past skintight clothes in order to morph with them). This was David B. Mattingly's response: "I know that having the characters morph with shoes and loose clothing is inaccurate to the books, but Scholastic and I preferred depicting the characters in realistic everyday clothing, rather than "morphing outfits." It makes the images more interesting, since the best part of the morphs artistically is when there is a complex blend of colors and fabric folds."

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