The Animorphs books taught my generation about digging deep in the face of an existential threat. We need that spirit now more than everRecently I found myself thinking about slug-like aliens that crawl through people’s ears and into their brains, with the ultimate purpose of global domination. It would explain a lot about what has gone so wrong with the world, wouldn’t it? And it was why I immediately flashed back to the children’s fantasy series Animorphs when Donald Trump’s health secretary and conspiracy theorist, Robert F Kennedy Jr, admitted to having had a worm in his brain.While visiting my parents in Cleveland, Ohio recently, I realised that a few books from the children’s fantasy series were still sitting on the shelves in my old bedroom. No fewer than 54 Animorphs titles were published between 1996 and 2001, and a total of 35m copies have been sold. ‘I may have just landed a job thanks to Animorphs,’ my childhood friend Clifton texted me with excitement in the mid-2010s, when we were fresh out of college. ‘It was an interview for a vegan food cart and the last question they asked me was what Animorph I would morph into. I said an orangutan.’Alexander Hurst writes for Guardian Europe from Paris. His memoir Generation Desperation is out now Continue reading…