By Taryn Clark

Book Summary

The One and Only Ivan By Katherine Applegate

The book is about a silverback gorilla named Ivan who lived in a cage at a mall. He watches tv, eats bananas and makes artwork. Along with Ivan, Stella, an elephant and Bob, a stray dog live also at the mall. Stella is an sick, old elephant who has a hurt leg and regularly performs in shows every day. But Stella would like to live at a zoo, because they have much wider spaces for their domains. Things began to change when a baby elephant named Ruby is brought to the Mall to learn new tricks and live with Stella. Stella’s hurt leg causes her to get sick. Just before Stella dies, she asks Ivan to take care of Ruby and find her a better place. Ivan promises he will take care of Ruby, even though he does not know how he will to do it. While Mack, the owner of the Big Top Mall is trying to train Ruby to do tricks, Ivan sees the abuse done to Ruby and starts to think of how to keep his promise to Stella. When Julia gives Ivan some finger paints, he gets an idea of how to help Ruby. Ivan uses his art to make a large picture of a zoo. George and Julia help him by putting it on the billboard outside of the Big Top Mall. When people see the new signs, they begin to protest the treatment of the animals. Police are sent to the Big Top Mall, and it is closed down. Ivan, Ruby and the other animals are taken away to a zoo. Ivan and Ruby are both adopted by the same zoo.

Challenge # 1

The memory flipper is going to help Ivan because when the people killed his family he was taken to the mall. He sometimes gets sad thinking about his family, and so the memory flipper is going to help him because when he’s sad he can flip a page and remember all the good times about his family when they were alive together.

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