The One and Only Ivan

I did not expect to get pulled into a book narrated by a gorilla. I picked up The One and Only Ivan because a teacher friend keeps it on her classroom shelf and said it makes fifth graders argue about zoos in the best way. The edition I used is the HarperCollins hardcover, 320 pages, first published in 2012. It won the Newbery Medal the next year, which I knew going in, and I tried not to let that raise my hopes too high. Within forty pages I was reading slower, not faster, because Ivan's voice is plain and dry and it earns your attention.

Ivan lives in a shopping mall. Not near one. In one. The Exit 8 Big Top Mall and Video Arcade has a circus corner with sawdust and spotlights, and Ivan's home is a walled space of concrete and glass with a tire swing and a small pool and a television he watches at night. He has been there for 27 years, long enough that he barely thinks about the jungle where he was born. He paints pictures. He watches shows. He naps. He jokes with his neighbors.

His closest neighbors are Stella, an older elephant with a bad foot and long memory, and Bob, a stray dog who sneaks in to sleep on Ivan's belly and steals food when he can. The mall is run by Mack, a showman who bought Ivan years ago and who loves his animals in the way people love a business that feeds them. Mack has a worker named George and George's daughter Julia, who cleans alongside her dad and slips Ivan paper and crayons because she sees he likes to draw. The days run in a loop. Shows at set times. Popcorn and crowds. Photos. Then quiet.

What struck me early is how little Ivan complains. He does not give speeches about freedom. He describes what he sees. The smell of butter and cleaning fluid. The way children press hands to glass. The way Stella sways to ease her leg. He remembers being small and held, but the memory comes in flashes, not in long sad passages. I found that restraint more moving than any rant would have been.

Ruby arrives

The loop breaks when Mack brings in Ruby, a baby elephant taken from the wild. She is small, curious, and frightened by the noise and lights. She cries for her family at night. Stella, who has seen many young ones come and go, moves close to her and rumbles low to calm her. Ivan watches and finds his routine slipping. He cannot nap through Ruby's whimpers. Bob, who usually cares mostly about dinner, sticks around longer than usual.

Ruby asks questions Ivan cannot answer well. Where do trees go at night. Why is the sky inside. Whether her mother can hear her from far away. Ivan deflects with jokes at first. He has a dry sense of humor about humans and their habits, about how they stare and point and drop trash. But Ruby keeps asking, and Stella keeps watching Ivan as if to say this one is on you.

Mack is pleased at first. A baby elephant draws crowds. Ticket sales lift. He pushes more shows, louder music, longer hours. Stella, already worn, is worked harder. Her leg worsens. She struggles to lie down and to rise. George worries. Julia worries. Ivan notices and files it away the way he files everything, until he cannot file it anymore.

A new young animal in a tired show changes what everyone can pretend not to see.

I should say the book handles this without turning Mack into a cartoon. He feeds his animals. He talks to Ivan like an old partner. He is also tired and in debt and making bad calls. That mix felt true to me. People who love animals can still keep them badly when money and habit get in the way.

Stella's promise

Stella's health fails in the middle of the book, and these chapters are the hardest to read. She remembers a wide youth, other elephants, mud and rivers, and she tells fragments to Ruby at night to keep the calf steady. She tells Ivan she cannot keep going. She asks him to protect Ruby and to find a way to get her out of the mall into a place with grass and other elephants and room to grow.

I will not detail the death scene beat by beat because Applegate writes it spare and it lands better on the page. What matters is the promise. Ivan, who has spent years telling himself he is content with art and television and routine, says he will try. He has no plan. He is a gorilla in a box. But he gives his word to an old friend, and the book shifts after that from observation to intent.

Bob reacts in his own way, which is to get angry and then to get practical. He is blunt where Ivan is careful. He needles Ivan about wasting time. He scouts halls and doors. He reports what humans say when they think no animal listens. Julia also steps forward more. She brings better paper. She talks about billboards and ads and how pictures can make people act. George warns her not to meddle with Mack's business, and she listens just enough to stay safe while still helping.

For me this is where the book earns its reputation with teachers. It shows a moral turn without preaching. Ivan does not suddenly see humans as evil. He sees one small elephant who needs more than concrete, and he decides his own comfort cannot be the excuse anymore.

How a gorilla paints a way out

Ivan has always drawn. At first it was beetles and bananas and shapes for fun. Julia gave him colors and saved his work. Mack even sold some paintings in the gift shop, which Ivan found funny and a little sad. After Stella dies, Ivan starts painting with purpose. He paints what Ruby needs. He paints the wild as he half remembers it. He paints Ruby in a large open place with trees.

The plan that forms is simple and shaky. If humans will not listen to words, maybe they will look at a picture. Julia helps get Ivan's large paintings seen. George takes a risk by placing them where crowds and cameras pass. Word spreads. People who came for a cheap show start asking why a gorilla is painting urgent pictures of an elephant under trees. A local reporter picks it up. Animal welfare people visit. Attendance drops as questions rise, which forces Mack to face pressure he had brushed off for years.

I am keeping this general because the joy is in watching Ivan puzzle it out step by step. He tries one thing and it falls flat. He tries another. He wastes paper. He gets frustrated and tears a sheet. Bob steals fries and offers opinions no one asked for. There are nights when nothing moves forward and Ivan wonders if a promise to a dead friend is enough to beat concrete walls.

What I admired is that Applegate does not let art work like a spell. The paintings do not open cages by themselves. They embarrass the mall, they draw eyes, they give decent humans a reason to push harder. The actual move takes lawyers and zoo staff and transport crates and paperwork. Ivan cannot carry Ruby out on his back into sunset. Humans built the trap, and humans have to take it apart.

There is fair criticism to make here too. Readers who want a fast rescue may fidget. The middle has many short chapters where little happens except cleaning, feeding, small talk, and sleep. That slowness fits a captive animal's life, but on a tired evening I felt it drag. Also, Ivan's voice is sometimes too wise for a gorilla who claims to waste words. He notices ironies and turns phrases in ways that feel human in a gorilla suit. I accepted it because the book never pretends otherwise, but if strict realism matters to you, this will test you.

Leaving the mall

When change comes, it comes in trucks and forms and tired adults arguing in hallways. Inspectors find problems Mack cannot explain away. A zoo with a real gorilla habitat and an elephant program agrees to take Ivan and Ruby. Mack fights it, then stalls, then signs. He is not written as redeemed in a big speech. He is written as beaten and, near the end, oddly tender, stroking Ivan's hand through bars and saying little. I felt sorry for him and angry at him in the same paragraph, which I think is what Applegate wanted.

The goodbyes are plain and hard. Bob, who has no papers and no cage, chooses to stay loose in the way stray dogs do, though Julia's family leaves food and a blanket where he can find them. Julia cries and draws Ivan a farewell picture full of mistakes that Ivan loves. George shakes Mack's hand and looks away. Ruby, who does not fully grasp what a zoo means, clings to Ivan's side until handlers coax her with food and soft voices.

Transport is strange and loud after years of mall hum. Ivan rides in a crate that smells of straw and diesel. He watches lights pass. He thinks of Stella and whether promises count after death. Applegate keeps his thoughts short here, which helps. A long speech would have broken the mood.

The zoo arrival is not instant joy. That honesty matters. Ivan is put in a separate space at first. Vets check him. He paces. He misses his tire and his television in flashes and feels ashamed of missing them. Then he sees grass that goes on, and a hill, and other gorillas at a distance who stare back with open curiosity. Ruby trumpets from her own yard. The sound carries. Ivan sits down in the sun and breathes different air.

Freedom here means a larger, kinder enclosure, not the wild, and the book does not hide that gap.

Some readers may wish Applegate had sent them back to Africa. She does not, and I think she is right not to. These are animals raised by humans who cannot survive release. A good zoo with space and company is the best repair available. Saying so plainly respects kids enough to tell them the truth.

What the book does well, and where it strains

Looking back, the strengths are clear. Ivan's narration stays steady. Short chapters with white space make it inviting for reluctant readers without dumbing anything down. Stella gives weight without taking over. Bob gives laughs without turning the story into a joke. Julia and George give young readers a way in, a kid and a parent who do small brave things like saving art and making calls.

The true story roots help too. The real Ivan lived for years in a Tacoma mall and later moved to Zoo Atlanta, where he lived a long life. Applegate borrows that frame and builds a kinder, tighter tale around it. She says in an afterword that she changed and compressed events, which I appreciated. Knowing the bones are real kept me from dismissing the mall as too strange to be true. Malls really did house such shows. People really did pay and pose.

My criticisms are modest but worth stating. Mack's money troubles are sketched thin. I wanted one clear scene of bills and empty seats to grasp why he pushes Stella so hard. The press and rescue move quickly after a slow build, and a few adult helpers blur together. And as noted, Ivan's wit sometimes sounds like a tired adult rather than a sheltered ape. None of this broke the book for me, but it kept it from feeling perfect.

I would hand this to readers around eight to twelve, and to any adult who likes animal stories without sugar coating. If captivity distresses you, know the sad parts are handled gently but do not look away. Stella's decline and Ruby's night crying are meant to ache. The ending repairs much, though not all, and it leaves room to talk about what we owe animals we put on display.

What stays with me is not a message but a picture. A large silverback sitting late at night with paper spread wide, pressing hard with a crayon, trying to show two legged crowds what words never got across. He is not an artist in the gallery sense. He is a friend trying to keep a promise with the only tools he has. The HarperCollins hardcover runs 320 pages but reads shorter because so many pages hold brief chapters and Patricia Castelao's drawings. I finished it in two sittings and sat quiet after, thinking about Stella's request and how long Ivan carried it alone. For a book told in such plain lines, that is a large thing to carry, and it carries well.