Titi Pani Naskah
Ito Wardiah
Fiorentina Italia
Ozi Azhari
Evajustika Gultom
Reading Sources: Animorphs “The Secret” by K. A. Applegate
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Hello All.
We are the new members of Reading Circle Community (RCC) from English Department, Faculty of Languages and Arts, State University of Padang.
Now, we'd like to tell you about our activity in the third meeting.
In this third meeting, we discussed a novel, Animorphs “The Secret” by K. A. Applegate
Here are the summary of the novel that we discussed:
Five ordinary kids and a young Andalite called Ax, against all the might of the Yeerk empire. All them called Animorphs . they are a handful kids—Jake, Rachel, Marcho, Tobias, Ax, and Casie. All of them are trying to fight the Yeerk and the controller. The Yeerk is a parasitic species from a far-distant planet. All they are is little gray slugs and in their natural state they look like big snails without the shell. The Yeerks don't live out their lives as slugs. They are parasites which enter the head of another species, flatten themselves out, and wrap themselves around the brain. And then they will take control. That's what they called as a Controller. A human who isn't exactly human anymore or a member of any species that is controlled by the Yeerk in its head.
The kids have some special powers to fight the Yeerk and the controller. They fight them together but it is useless if they do that alone. They fight in the hope that someday soon, the Andalites will return and help them. It was an Andalite prince named Elfangor who gave them the powers. He was dying, desperate and wanted to do something to help doomed humanity. Elfangor gave them the power to morph. It can be used to absorb the DNA of any animal that tey could touch to become that animal. So they fight the Yeerks and all their Controllers. The human-Controllers who may once have been our friends and relations. The evil, cannibalistic Taxxon-Controllers, those huge centipedes with their open, gnashing mouths and foul smell. And the deadly, dangerous, but formerly good creatures called Hork-Bajir— the enslaved foot soldiers of the Yeerk empire.
The Yeerks are everywhere. The school bus driver, the police officer in the patrol car, the minister in the pulpit, the newsman on TV, the rock star in the music video, the person who smiles at you when you ride by on your bike, your teacher, your friend, your sister, your mother and father and any one of them might be a Controller.
They fight Visser Three. The leader of the Yeerk invasion of Earth. He is the only Andalite-Controller in existence and the only Yeerk who has the power to morph. He is the murderer of Elfangor, a killer, a destroyer and the creature who would make slaves of all humans and destroy the earth planet. Visser will not stop the invasion unless someone stops him or they stop him.
When Rachel and Cassie have to morph a rat, they just need an animal's DNA then they touch it and focusing mind on the animal. That’s a way to make them morph. When the animal gets kind of sleepy, kind of dopey, in a minute it’s all over and a new DNA pattern is swimming around inside them. Then Cassie focused her thoughts, forming a mental picture of the rat. And then she felt the change begin. It also happened to Rachel. She was shrinking very fast into kind of short but a lot bigger than a rat. Then they try to find the maze.
Cassie gets into the maze and she had to figure out why Courtney couldn't find the nuts. She should be able to smell the nuts but she also cannot smell them, not at all.
Cassie looked around, puzzled. Then she noticed the breeze, she aimed her rat eyes upward. There, a million miles up, as far away as the moon, was a ceiling fan. It's blowing the scent of the nuts away. She was feeling pretty satisfied with her insight when two things happened at once. First, Courtney came zooming around the corner of the maze. The second thing was that she heard a loud crash, a roar of loud laughter, and the rushing approach of footsteps. Courtney froze and stared at Cassie. She stared at her. Then she looked back at Rachel. Rachel was frozen, same as Cassie.
That evening, everyone came over. They usually hook up at the Wildlife Rehabilitation Clinic. She was cleaning the cages when the others started to arrive. It was a raccoon cage, to be specific. Then, Jake and Marco came through the small side door of the barn. Jake was in the lead, as usual.
Right on cue, we heard a flutter of wings. A hawk shot in through the open hayloft above. It turned sharply, killed its speed, swept its talons forward, and landed neatly on a rafter. It was a red-tailed hawk, mostly brown on its back, a lighter, mottled brown and tan beneath. The bird took its name from its tail feathers, which were the color of rust.
Tobias is the fifth human member of our group. Even though, he's not entirely human anymore. See, if you stay more than two hours in a morph, you stay forever. In his mind and heart, Tobias is still a human being -- mostly. But he has the body of a hawk and he lives as a hawk.
Ax is Aximili-Esgarrouth-Isthill. He's the sixth person in our group. He's even less human than Tobias. Ax is an Andalite. Tobias swooped down to be closer. He landed on the top edge of a stall door. He checked out the many cages. At the moment we had, in addition to the raccoon, a fox, two wolves, a handful of various bats, a really cool porcupine, a pair of jackrabbits, a deer that had been mauled by a bear, several doves, a goose, a swan cygnet, a whole group of assorted gulls, a beautiful red-winged blackbird, and a barn owl.
Tobias didn't look too happy. But then, Tobias has a hawk's face, so he never looks anything but fierce. Once he was a very sweet, slightly dopey kid. Jake and he met when Jake stopped some bullies from sticking Tobias's head in the toilet.
"Yeerks?" Rachel wondered. "But why would the Yeerks want to be logging in the forest?" The Yeerks" plan was all too obvious. "They want to destroy habitat," Cassie said. The Yeerks are right there in our forest. Fine," Rachel said with her usual enthusiasm for anything dangerous. "Let's go take a look." "If this is a Yeerk operation, we have to be careful," Marco said. "They're expecting us." "They split up, go in two groups in different morphs. They see what they see, but they do nothing. Ten minutes later, Marco and I were walking across the far fields of my farm, wading through tall grass toward the edge of the forest.
The forest is huge. It reaches all the way back up into the mountains. Thousands, maybe millions of square miles of pines and oaks and a scattering of birch trees sweep down from the mountains all the way to the edges of town. Our farm is right on the edge. Lots of farms are, and some new housing developments and so on.
There was a cool breeze, loaded with the smell of wildflowers. Two of our horses were grazing off across the field by the fence. It was a safe area, so we let the horses run free at night in nice weather. Of course, now that wolves were being reintroduced into the forest, we might have to change that. A wolf pack can bring down even a healthy, strong horse. I know. I've been a wolf. And I was getting ready to be one again.
They shoved our outer clothing under some brush, and she began to morph. She focused her mind on the wolf whose DNA was a part of her. Marco and Cassie was actually the identical wolf. They had both absorbed the DNA of the same female. The wolf's instincts began to surface, but she had done this morph before, so she could handle them easily.
In this novel tells us about Marco, Rachel, Jack, Tobias and Cassie were in the forest. From the cloud the Elfangor was watching them to know about their power that he gave. Tobias with Rachel was to show up their power, without knowing their friends, they look like different. Tobias was disappeared. Yeerks was controlling them with their mind. They almost get caught by the net but Ax was saving them.
They were running on sensation, their heads swimming with smell and sound and sight. There was nothing within a thousand yards that they didn't know about. They were plugged into the data stream of nature itself. They smelled the logging camp long before they reached it. Then they heard the sounds of machines. And they heard the murmurs of conversation. Human voices. Then they got a reminder that they were not the only hyper-alert predators in the forest.
On the back-and-side ground levels there were no windows. None at all. There were windows on the upper level, but they were dark. Too dark for Cassie to see into. There were blindingly bright spotlights mounted atop the building. The forest had been cut back a hundred feet or so on all sides of the building, and the bare, scarred earth all around was lit as bright as the sunniest day. A dozen or so huge pieces of equipment were parked neatly side by side. Earth movers, oddly shaped cranes, trucks, and some monstrous thing that looked like a huge kid's toy. Cassie guessed that it was used to cut trees.
They had reached the far edge of the forest, back close to the farm. Marco and Cassie had demorphed. Rachel and Jake flew down and joined them. Tobias took up a perch on a low branch. Ax stood nearby. His two stalk eyes moved continuously, side to side, peering into the dark woods around them. His two main eyes met Cassie gaze.
They met at the mall. It was a Saturday, so it was a normal place they might be. When he live in a world where they’re surrounded by possible enemies, it's important not to do anything too unusual. They don't want to draw attention .Not even from their own family and school friends. They just never know who can be trusted and who can't. The Yeerks believed they were Andalites. They wanted them to go on believing that. If they ever figured out they were humans, let alone kids, they were toast.
Her parents don't usually ask her a lot of questions. Mostly they trust her. And it used to be they could trust her. She doesn’t think she lied to her parents before becoming an Animorph. Now it's like she lying all the time. It's a rotten feeling.
Cassie imagined being that termite. Crawling across the gigantic hand. Thinking every crease in Rachel's palm was as deep as a ditch. When Rachel was done, Cassie held out her own hand. It was shaking. It was shaking and she couldn't stop it from shaking. The brightly lit mall food court suddenly seemed dark. Lord, that tiny insect scared me. Deep down inside, it truly scared her.
In the end of chapter they decided to go that night. They were supposed to use the afternoon to deal with chores and family stuff and homework. They try doing homework in a few hours. Try concentrating on math when you're thinking you have to turn into a termite and sneak into heavily defended buildings.
Cassie talked for a while as to her father, made rounds together. But her heart wasn't in it. She was thinking about some baby skunks, mewing and crying for their mother. And she was thinking she wished her dad wasn't so quick to let her go to Rachel's. Because, of course, they weren't really having a sleepover. Rachel was going to tell her mom she was spending the night at Cassie house. And Jake would tell his parents a lie, and Marco would tell his father a lie, and they all be going into a situation that none of them wanted to be in.
Jake have came back to his group. Marco is sarcastically talking to him. The same five kids who had wandered stupidly through a construction site at night on our way home from the mall. They have changed their live and seem like several Soldiers in a terrible war we could not really hope to win. Ax was there, too. Poor Ax, who was even more alone than the rest of us. He was in his own body, his stalk eyes restlessly peering in every direction. They all started to remove our outer clothing.
Then, Jake tells his plan. They morph owls to get close. They demorph at least two hundred yards away from the compound. Then they Crawl close, morph termites, dig under the force field, and enter the termite holes in the outside of the building."
They start to transform become owl. Ax was morphing quickly. His tail went limp Feathers were growing to replace his fur. The rest of members also doing transform become owls. Suddenly, it was no longer night. It was as bright as day. The amount of light that was a dim, flickering candle to their human eyes was a spotlight to their owl's eyes.
Tobias is still sitting on his branch. They couldn’t go because he was bad at night. They flew in a loose formation, flitting through the trees. I swooped and zoomed through the trees. All the while I watched the ground below me and focused my hearing, and in that way I reached the Yeerk’s compound without having to think too much about what was coming next.
In the way of their journey, they heard the sound of skunk. They felt really strange having two feelings as human and as a predator. As a human they want to rescue the skunk, but in the predator, they want to eat it. They start to demorph quickly and get closer to the compound.
Then, they morph become members of yeerks. But in the middle of the journey Jake was change his mind. He want to transform become a wolf. They walk separately. Yeerk is actually same like cockroaches. They have a society like ants, but roaches are closer relatives. They eat cellulose. But before their do transformation, Cassie felt on the ground and totally blind.
Cassie is transform become a cockroach. As same as the other. The termites are blind, except for the queens and kings. The termite legs were not very strong or very fast. Not as fast as an ant's. I could feel the rocks I was climbing over. Or the grains of dirt, I guess they were. They felt like rocks, anyway. The termites get closer to them. They all realized that they are in termite’s colony right mow.
They raced swiftly down the tunnel. In the tunnels wall, there are some pulps of woods that contain several informations. The colonies Hormones have passing, it’s containing information. Vague orders. Indistinct yet powerful instructions. They also get their instruction in their tunnel.
Cassie was influenced of his termite’s brain. She force her self to become aware again. When they get have recognized his humanity, a big termite come, getting closer, and sh recognize that it was the Queen. He was in the chamber of the termite queen. She had orders for me -- protect the egg-carrying worker termites. The orders came in smells and vague feelings, but they were impossible to refuse.
Marco, ax, Rachel are also in her controls. Cassie yelled so hard, but they did not realize her. By the time, they can realize her. To go out form the colony they have to defeat the Queen. But they couldn’t do it. But my body was not my own. I could not make it...
Cassie wanted to demorf become an human, her friend pretend her to do that. Cassie have already demorf as a human, but the size is too tiny as a termite. After she go out from the wood, her own body comes back. It was dark in the room, but there were glowing red-and-green indicator lights. And there was a computer monitor showing neat screen-saver triangles floating and reforming. They are realized that they’re inside the Yeerk’s building. They all are trapped on it.
Cassie felt worry with her family. Their family does not know what happened to her this moment. In her mind, “I have been more animals than many people ever see in a lifetime. I have flown with the wings of an osprey. I've raced through the ocean in the body of a dolphin. I've seen the world through the eyes of an owl at night, and smelled the wind with all the keen senses of a wolf.” They are talking about their experience, they compared between before and after they had ability to morph as an animal.
Cassie was sad frustration. Rachel gives her encouragement. They start to think the way to go out from the building before the Yeerks recognize them.
From the story, Cassie went to the skunk’s lair because she cared about those skunk’s babies. She transformed into skunk and give the food to the skunk’s babies. Cassie fall in love with them. Because of her love for the baby skunk she fell asleep with them and forgot the morph’s time limit. Suddenly Jake woke him up. He said that Cassie has transform for almost two hours. Marco also there with Tobias in the three. Marco and Tobias argued with Cassie but Jake stand before her. Cassie felt strange because she feels she was being used in the group. She felt tired of fighting. Jake explains that this is not just for human being this is for all human own good.
Later the next day, Marco, Rachel, Ax and Cassie chatted about how adorable the Skunk is. They planned to keep the skunks. They have a plan to protect the skunks by shifting the members each. Ax will morph into skunk’s mother and Tobias patrol above. They had little joke to melt the ice from the intensity of the yeerk. Cassie thinks that she was crazy because she save a bunch of skunk instead of another extinct animal.
The next two days, they protected and nurtured a foursome of baby skunk. Marco started to like them and begin to give them names. Cassie takes the foursome baby skunk for a walk, because they look so wonder how the outside world might be look like. They follow Cassie who morph into skunk all four in line in orderly fashion. On the middle of the street suddenly a dog come with the drooling mouth. Cassie shot the skunk’s spray into the dog and it fell. The dog owner came and bring it home. All four of Cassie’s friend laughed because what just Cassie did was disgusting. In the distance they heard a sound of machine which is use by Yeerk. Cassie and friend made a plan to save their Skunk by snatch a guy named Farrant and try to slow the machine that cutting of the tree down.
Tobias and Cassie was left in the skunk den, while others went to snatch guy named Farrant in the Yeerk logging camp. They talked about how morph can related to their human sense. They transform into a bird and looking for foods in the river. They saw Farrand on the road with a couple of man with him. They saw one of them is Visser Three the only yerk who can morph He was using human DNA and human form as part of his plan to enslave all of humanity. They attack the Yeerk. Cassie attack the Visser and Tobias attack another. But their attack was failed and visser shot them.
Cassie woke up in a small box with holes. She can see the old Farrand lying down the floor. Vissers turn on the force field in order to protect him. She treated to kill farrant to make his way out. Visser afraid that he couldn’t use Farrant so he told his man to lie down their weapon. Visser told to his man to aim at the box to kill the candalite. Cassie already aim at Farrand and ready to fire. The both fired, but Cassie take the first shot.
From the story above, the characters are in a forest. They want to reach the Yeerk logging camp. They have only one way to reach it so Jake, Marco, Rachel, and Ax leave Cassie and Tobias. While the other left both of them, they are talking about Tobias live. He tried to tell Cassie about his feeling and his real life in daily life. Cassie accepted Tobias naturally. All of kind of god’s creating have a right to live, whether it is a human, hawks, or the other. And then, they went to fly high of the trees. When they were flying, they saw a vehicle coming down the road. In the vehicle, there are three guys and they are controllers. So they reach the camp in a few minutes. And they know that the three guys is Visser three.
Visser three is the leader of the Yeerk invasion of the earth. The only Yeerk in all the universe to have taken control of an Andalite body. The visser three are going to take Farrand. Farrand was walking toward the visser three, still waving his hands widly toward the heavy chinery that was chewing through the trees. Visser three was smiling with a bad smile. Suddenly, Tobias were aware, where were Jake and the others. They wouldn’t know the Jake’s position and the other. Tobias came to visser three and hit one of the guys from the jeep. Cassie Jake was closing in fast, a black and orange streak. Beside tht Rachel and Marco were on the controllers operating the machines. Ax run to help Rachel from the guard. And finally, a dispute was happened and then everything went black.
Visser three took them into box. Cassie and Farrand want to free from the box. She heard Visser Three ordering the perimeter defenses and to make sure to destroy anything that got out of the box. Farrand and Cassie looked for the weakness of Yeerks. Farrand tried to looked for visser weakness. The weakness of visser three is he needed Farrand alive. By threatening to kill Farrand, will threaten the visser’s plan.
One Controller reports that the Animorphs have now turn the machines against the Yeerks, so the Visser orders the force field be turn on. Cassie thinks over what to do next, the others were still fighting and had turned the machines on the Yeerks, but the force field would render them useless and Visser Three would then call for reinforcements, and they would be done for, but she doesn't give in, this was a game of predator and prey, what could she use against them? Just then, Farrand moans and Cassie knew exactly what to do, she quickly demorphs and morphs into a skunk, she hears that the force field had stopped the machines and Bug fighters with reinforcements will be arriving very soon, he had them this time. Concentrating hard, Cassie thought-speaks to Visser Three, trying not to reveal that she was human. She warns him that she'll kill Farrand, because she knew they needed him alive for their plan to succeed. Visser Three understood and has the Controllers surround the box, Cassie takes position as the door opens. Visser Three laughs in amusement at the chubby, cat-sized black and white in the box that had its back to him and it tail raised to him.
Cassie then fires several times and hitting the Visser and the Controllers run for the outside get away from the horrid skunk smell. Outside, the force field is still on, but the tree-cutting machines were now strained up against the force field and the Animorphs, in their battle moprhs, had defeated the Controllers. Ax spoke to Visser Three, stating that they've reached a standoff, if the force field came down, the machines would destroy the building and would probably kill Farrand, which neither side wants, but the Visser wouldn't be bargained with, as he has forces in the way to help, but Ax questions how the Visser's Blade ship will smell once once the skunk stench is introduced. However, if they let Farrand go free, they'll give them the secret on how to neutralize the stench. Knowing he has no other choice, Visser Three orders his men to get Farrand, once he's dropped off at the nearest hospital, they'll reveal the secret, and Tobias will be watching to make sure they don't try anything. After Farrand is dropped off at the hospital, the Animorphs tell Visser Three about a certain kind of juice that will eliminate the smell, and he screams in fury as they disappear into the woods.
The next day, Jake, Marco, Rachel, Cassie, and Ax brought the mother skunk back to her den and Jake said it's now safe for them. He had spied on Farrand in fly morph, revealing that he's fine and he's voted against the logging of the forest, in fact, he didn't want anything to do the Yeerk's logging company. As they headed back home, Jake hung back with a confused Cassie, asking her what was bothering her. She explained how did the whole law of nature thing made sense and whether to just live by it, or if she's different because she's human. Jake didn't know at first, but he answers that she's both, but Cassie didn't feel like that was much help, which means that human are still partly wild animals, doing whatever it takes to survive, and partly something more than the other animals. Jake then says he does know all animals take care of themselves, only one animal has the intelligence and to save all the others. Just then, Tobias appeared. He came back from checking in on the Yeerks. They've dug a big pit and filled it with juice. Visser Three has been in it for most of the night and for the whole morning, but he still stinks and is now purple. It turns out that the juice they told the Visser would get rid of the skunk smell was not tomato juice, but grape juice, and they all break out laughing.
And, for you who want to share what you think about the story, feel free to comment in our post.
And, RCC always kindly invites you who are interested to join.
Thanks (^o^)/
“Achieving Better Future by Having Fun Reading”
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