Rachel

It has never been clarified what Rachel's surname is, though most fans and fanfic writers use Berenson as she is cousins with Jake. Rachel looks like your typical snobby, beautiful, tall, blonde airhead. However readers saw right from the beginning that Rachel was, as Marco nicknamed her, Xena - warrior princess. Brave, fearless and smart. Her rash desicions and inability to see all the dangers stopped her from being leader material, but she was the best fighter in the animorphs. Strong-willed and adventurous, Rachel often got into trouble but when needed, was always one the front line, shouting 'Let's Do It!'. As well as being a fighter, her other three main skills were shopping, gymnastics and doing well in school. She was too tall to ever be really good at gymnastics, but she still carried on. Even being an animorph didn't stop her from shopping and getting good grades.

Morphs: 43 African elephant, bald eagle, shrew, cat, wolf, trout, dolphin, seagull, ant, cockroach, fly, great horned owl, grizzly bear, rat, termite, skunk, bat, spider monkey (sario rip), jaguar (sario rip), crocodile (though she was allergic, and later got rid of the DNA through Hereth Illint), Hork-Bajir, horse, parrot, hammerhead shark, mole, mosquito, Deinonychus (sario rip), flea, anteater, seal, polor bear, sperm whale, giant squid, chimp, eel, starfish, squirrel, cockatiel, orca whale, cheetah, honeybee, human, beaver.

Animorphs

The legacy of the animorphs began in June 1996 when the first book, The Invasion, was published. It introduced the teen reading population to what would become one of the most successful teen book series' of all time. The five main characters, along with the readers, were introduced into the long battle to save the earth from an invasion of aliens. This wouldn't be an all out war, of guns and explosions. This would be a war of stealth and subterfuge. The Yeerks could not find out who these five children were, or the fight would be over, they would be killed or even worse - made into controllers. You see these aliens were different from most, they were parasites. They crawled into the ears of people and took over their brains. The person could not move, or talk for himself. The yeerk did it all, while pretending to be the person. It was impossible to tell a change. The yeerk had access to all their memories, and could be exactly like the person once was. When the Animorphs found out about this war, there were alredy thousands of controllers, and they didn't know who was one. They had to fight this war secretly, and alone. Five children against thousands of powerful aliens with guns and spaceships, ridiculous? Not quite. They had a weapon. They had the power to morph into animals. Any animal they wanted (although they had to touch the animal to aquire its DNA for later use). The catch was, they could only morph the animal for two hours at a time or they would be trapped in its form forever.

TV Show

The TV series was released in 1998 and contained some original stories and some remakes from the books. It lasted 2 seasons. The character of Rachel was played by the lovely Brooke Nevin.

Character and series summary by me.