The One And Only Ivan By Katherine Applegate

The One and Only Ivan is the 2013 Newbery award book written by Katherine Applegate. It’s remarkable and unusual writing style and sentimental approach does more than just send a message that animals have feelings. It also renders a novel attitude towards concepts such as freedom, responsibility, and aspiration, which makes the book worthy of a Newbery medal.

The One and Only Ivan is a novel, based on a true story, from the first person point of view of Ivan, a gorilla who spent most of his life in a mall cage. He lives with his friends, Stella (an old elephant) and Bob (a stray dog), and makes paintings, which are sold at the mall. The distinctive writing style implemented in this book helps focus on Ivan’s relationship with a newly captive baby elephant called Ruby, whose wellbeing Ivan becomes responsible for. Ruby, coming from the wild, makes him see his captive life from a new perspective and he begins to remember what his life before the cage was like and how it felt to truly be free. He sees Ruby being ill-treated by the ringmaster and realizes that living at the mall was not what he thought it was. So, he paints a picture of a zoo and gets it put up outside the mall, with the help of a friendly little girl named Julia. People then begin to take notice of the maltreatment of the animals at the mall and so, the
Applegate helps us probe into the life of a captive animal and the conditions it faces and creates a dense and emotional plot around the major themes of the novel, which a child (and parent) would really appreciate. She enables the readers to experience first-hand what it is like to be in the place of the gorilla, which plays as a powerful and emotive tool to convey the themes in the novel across to its readers. The accuracy and organization of information, although not clear throughout the book, are justified by the writing style Applegate