From the Different Perspective of the Gorilla: The One and Only Ivan by Katherine Applegate

When it comes to stories, I love reading different perspectives.

I love getting multiple perspectives as in  Wonder, and I love hearing the voices of the seemingly silent.

So when on the very first page of The One and Only Ivan, I read that the narrator was a gorilla, my anticipation grew for the book.

After the initial pleasantry, I was a little disheartened.  The language was so simple and seemingly monotonous (especially in the sentence structure).

Oh boy, I thought, this could be hard.

However, I pressed on and continued reading.  Soon, I found myself friends with Ivan (I feel like I befriend all the characters in books that I really like; it's just something about the magic of a book).

I kept turning pages to know what would happen next.  Ivan, as I mentioned, is a gorilla.

For the past twenty-seven years, he has spent his life with the humans.  When he was smaller, he became a pseudo-human but as he got older he had to leave that world.  Now as a silverback (a gorilla who protects his family because of his seniority), he lives in a "domain" also known as a cage in a mall with an elephant, Stella, and with a homeless dog, Bob, and with a few other animals as well.

Early on, Ivan reveals that he is a true artist; he uses crayons and paper and draws things he sees (usually a banana peel).  Besides that and conversing with his animal friends, Ivan's life is fairly monotonous day in and day out; in fact, people are no longer as excited to see him.

Whoa is me!  Business is bad!  [said in a heavy Greek accent].

However, the turning point in the book is when a new animal comes, a baby elephant named Ruby who just like a typical human of three or four year old asks questions about everything.  She has a child-like spirit, easily frightened and tired but yet eager to know all the world and its intricacies.

Suddenly, Ivan's attitude changes about everything; suddenly, he has someone to truly paint for and someone to really protect as a true silverback does.

This story is very much a bildungsroman story where a character matures.  Though this is not the typical boy becomes a man story, it does show how a grown up gorilla must assume and learn the ways of a silverback.

Ivan must learn how to protect those that he loves, those that are part of his family.  He cannot live as he has done for most of his life relying on others to provide for himself.

Ruby allows Ivan to assume the position of a silverback so that the ending can actually happen.  (I am very much against revealing what happens in endings because I always hate it when people reveal things for me. So no, I am not going to discuss the ending though I would love to talk about it).

Though as the story progressed, I became more and more involved in the story that Ivan was telling, there was one part that I felt needed more explanation.

Personally, I liked Mack and how Ivan portrayed him; I did not feel that he embodied the "bad guy character" that seemed to occur toward the end of the novel.  This was the man that practically raised Ivan and allowed him to experience the human world for a few years.

Perhaps it was the style of writing that allowed me to sympathize with Mack: I felt like I understood his motives even if his actions were unjustified.  I knew that he was desperate for money, and he was doing all that he could.

I never despised him though like I knew I was supposed to do.  In the end, I was really quite surprised at what does happen to Mack; it almost felt incongruent with the rest of the story.  (Do not get me wrong, I still felt the ending was completely satisfying)

On a more positive note, I really loved Julia, the janitor's daughter who always sits by Ivan's domain and is a fellow artist just like Ivan.

She has a kindness and an understanding about her that makes her a lovable character.  In her, the author captures a child's openness to things that adults would automatically dismiss like animals actually drawing something.

Julia sees Ivan's drawings and after studying it determines that it is the beetle that is running around on the floor of the cage.

Naturally through this, Ivan knows that they are kindred spirits (as Anne of Green Gables would say) and true artists together.  She is the human who puts Ivan's final plan into motion.  She is the one who helps others to recognize that Ivan is a true silverback.

Despite my initial reactions, I really loved this book.  For the most part, I felt that the characters are well developed and have differing personalities that can engage any type of reader.  

It is a fun book that opens up the minds of animals  in a creative but simple way.  I would highly recommend this book for anyone who wants a quick, quality, and creative read.