The One and Only Ivan

2011

animals
elephants
fiction
gorilla
treatment
juvenile fiction
circus animals
circus
animal welfare
social themes

The story

Having spent 27 years behind the glass walls of his enclosure in a shopping mall, Ivan has grown accustomed to humans watching him. He hardly ever thinks about his life in the jungle. Instead, Ivan occupies himself with television, his friends Stella and Bob, and painting. But when he meets Ruby, a baby elephant taken from the wild, he is forced to see their home, and his art, through new eyes.

What it’s like

Soft, sun-warmed afternoons in a shopping mall, with the flat fluorescent glow of a storefront and the murmur of shoppers beyond the glass, give way to quiet, close-observed scenes of a gorilla's world: a fat paintbrush in a slow hand, a strip of television light on concrete, a dog and an old elephant dozing nearby. The voice is first-person and plainly spoken, short chapters and free verse-like lines that leave room to breathe, with almost no music beyond the ambient hum of a building. Its mood is gentle, wistful, and quietly hopeful, the sort of cozy melancholy that suits a rainy Sunday, a comfort reread, or a slow evening at home. Pacing is unhurried, with the emotional weight landing in small, precise moments rather than action. Its central relationship is a patient friendship that slowly reshapes how a lonely creature sees home and freedom. The book is gentle and low-intensity: sadness and confinement are present, and a brief sense of threat around a hard-used animal is handled with restraint, with no gore and no graphic violence. It is for readers, young and older, who want a tender, thoughtful story about animals and dignity.

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