an interesting aspect of Animorphs is that the series wasn't written by the author whose name is on the cover. and I don't think this is much of a conspiracy even, as it was at some point admitted by the alleged author that due to the overwhelming workload, the books had to be ghostwritten. which to me sends a clear message that Applegate may have had nothing to do with the writing of the series. as for the gateway theory, I bet it wasn't put there for no reason. it was published by Scholastic, which from what I gather is the biggest publisher of school books in the US. if I were now to point to an entity that could've been involved in the writing and publishing of these books, I'd say the Church of Scientology. kinda funny, but not really - look into the history of science fiction as a literary genre. the running joke is that the scientology was founded by a sci-fi writer, which makes me wonder if we haven't got this backwards. for more on how media has been messing with children's heads, see Fredric Wretham's "Seduction of the Innocent" about the postwar comic mania.