This document compares and contrasts the children's book series Animorphs from the 1990s and Twilight from the 2000s. [1] Animorphs targeted pre-teen boys with themes of saving the world from an alien invasion, while Twilight targeted young girls with themes of love and relationships. [2] The document argues that Twilight included more adult themes like vampires, love, sex, and teen pregnancy that may not be appropriate for its target audience. [3] It questions whether exposing children to media with adult themes can negatively impact their innocence and interest in age-appropriate content.

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Christopher Hatch
Professor Renee Hobbs
COM 410: Children & Media
28 September 2012
Old Vs. New: Children’s Media
Trends, and peer pressure can be a powerful force to combat anything a parent has to
say, especially if it’s of the opposite opinion. I was not
planning on choosing a book for my comparison, yet as I sat
here thinking to myself regarding which form of media to
discuss, I simply thought of my favorite form of media as a
child; and there was my answer. I loved to read, sometimes
flying through a three hundred page book in a single day at
only eleven or twelve years old. With that in mind, it was easy
to pick out a specific title, deciding on my favorite series
growing up: Animorphs.
Animorphs, written by K. A. Applegate and published by Scholastic, was a long and
engaging story of six teenagers who acquire the ability to transform into any animal that they
touch. Using this power, they secretly fought an alien infiltration of the planet earth. Each book
was told in the first person perspective, with one character being the narrator for each title.
Animorphs was definitely geared for children ages 9-13, though I started reading them when I
was seven, even though the series could be rather dark at times with its themes which
sometimes included war, loss, horror, murder, morality, innocence, right vs. wrong, and

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betrayal. For instance, in the very beginning of the series, one of the characters, Tobias, breaks
the ultimate morphing rule and stays in animal form for longer than the two hour maximum.
When that happens, the morpher is trapped in that animal form forever, and can never morph
again. Tobias lost his human life before he was a teenager, permanently stuck as a red-tailed
hawk.
Finding a series to compare to Animorphs was much easier to think of than finding the
initial series to discuss. Animorphs started in 1996, when I was just six years old, and I read
them all within the next five years, stopping with the last book when I was eleven, and just
before I began Harry Potter. When I thought of a series, immediate Twilight came to mind.
Twilight was much simpler to come up with because it is much more recent, became much
more popular than Animorphs ever did or will, especially since Twilight has been turned into a
five film franchise. Animorphs was briefly on Nickelodeon but never took off and only lasted a
few episodes.
Twilight, a four part series detailing the life of Bella Swan and her first love Edward
Cullen, who happens to be a vampire. This quartet details the
struggles of their relationship, as well as opposition to their union
from all fronts. Twilight was written for a typically female
audience for readers as young as twelve. Twilight focuses a lot on
issues of love, loss, death, betrayal, freedom, and making your
own decisions.
So why did I choose to compare these two, I’m not exactly

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sure, but I’m glad I did. The first thing that I’d like to point out is the target audience. Animorphs
has a very set pre-teen male audience, which in my opinion is pretty inflexible. Any younger,
and the reader lacks the skills to understand the book, and any older and it’s too childish, and
there are more appropriate books to take their place. Animorphs was written with a very
specific age group in mind. Twilight however, geared towards female audiences as young as
twelve, has a much more fluid audience range, with some reports that even forty year olds
were reading the series.
This brings into question that as time has gone on, has children’s media adapted to
include themes and interests much more blatantly adult than media in the same genre
published before?Animorphs definitely has some heavy themes that can be on the darker side,
such as when one character discovers that the mother he thought died years ago is really alive
and the commanding alien of the takeover of earth. As dark as that sounds, the idea of a secret
alien takeover is laughable, keeping the series in its appropriate age range. Twilight on the
other hand is about vampires, an inherently adult subject. One of my favorite authors of all
time is Anne Rice, a brilliant novelist that lured readers into her dark, destructive, and intensely
sexual depictions of vampires. True Blood, currently a television show on HBO that is based off
a series of novels still being published, that has been called “vampire soft-core porn” is another
blatant example of vampires in a very adult context.
For these novels to attract such a large age range there has to be elements too young
for older reader, and elements too old for younger readers. I also ask,does children’s media
with adult themes make children more interested in media exclusively meant for a much older

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audience? For example, would a child with a laptop secretly watch True Blood online because
they read and saw the Twilight?
I see a huge discrepancy with this issue of adult themes too young in my comparison of
these novels published years apart. Animorphs in its time was more than likely considered
violent, but left out themes of love, sex, and teen pregnancy, all which occur in Twilight. I would
ask if there was a series that managed to blend the best of both worlds for children and adults,
as non-offensively as possible, but I already know the answer: Harry Potter, which did a great
job of keeping all ages interested but was written in a way that younger readers would see
magic and good vs. evil as the main themes, but adults would catch all of the themes the kids
missed. What once seemed to be age appropriate entertainment (Animorphs) has turned into a
quest to gather as many readers and as much attention as possible with in my opinion, no
regard for the lowest age of the intended target audience.
The media targets these two groups (young males and young females) very differently.
These days you can’t even go to McDonalds and order a happy meal without having to specify
which gender toy choice you’d prefer. Both of these book series take place during very
important years of their main character’s lives; all of them are going through puberty. All of
them are changing: emotionally, mentally, physically, and in other ways as well. Just because
the readers can all relate to that, doesn’t mean that they are all marketed to in the same way.
Boys going through puberty are becoming men, saving the world and being a protector are
paramount. Animorphs offered young male readers the chance to save the world, and with over
sixty books we were able to do it again and again. Young girls going through puberty are

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becoming women, and in the media are seen as needing that protection, as well as being most
concerned with love. Girls reading Twilight were able to fall in love and need protecting
through the eyes and mind of Bella Swan. Because of those basic urges, and premises of
puberty, media producers have/had been able to relate to young viewers on an almost primal
level
As a media consumer, and hopefully as a media producer one day, I see a problem with
the level of enticement that adult media plays in children’s lives. Yes, it is a parents job to
protect their children and decide what is, and is not appropriate for their children, however
when the two most popular options are Twilight books and movies, or Keeping up With the
Kardashians…what’s a parent to do? Today’s youth are quickly growing up, and losing that once
beloved childhood innocence. Where are the books and shows and games that revel in
childhood, that grasp onto it and never let go. Gone are the days of Tom Hank’s Big, or Robin
William’s Jack…instead we have teen pregnancy in Twilight, and much worse in other forms of
media. As I begin to wonder about the loss of innocence and growing up to quickly; the
question has begun forming in my mind…”Surely a child exposed to no media must be better
off than a child exposed to too much (adult) media…right?”
Source:
Barbaro, A. (Director) (2008). Consuming kids: The Commercialization of Childhood [Web].