The One and Only Ivan (The One and Only Ivan, #1)

by Katherine Applegate

Humans speak too much. They chatter like chimps, crowding the world with their noise even when they have nothing to say.

The glass says you are this and we are that and that is how it will always be.

In a Western, you can tell who the good guys are and who the bad guys are, and the good guys always win. Bob says Westerns are nothing like real life.

Every night, when the stores close and the moon washes the world with milky light, Stella and I talk. We don’t have much in common, but we have enough. We are huge and alone, and we both love yogurt raisins. Sometimes Stella tells stories of her childhood, of leafy canopies hidden by mist and the busy songs of flowing water. Unlike me, she recalls every detail of her past. Stella loves the moon, with its untroubled smile. I love the feel of the sun on my belly. She says, “It is quite a belly, my friend,” and I say, “Thank you, and so is yours.”

“They think I’m too old to cause trouble,” Stella says. “Old age,” she says, “is a powerful disguise.”

I throw a me-ball at them. Sometimes I wish the glass were not there.

Gorillas are not complainers. We’re dreamers, poets, philosophers, nap takers.

“I think I may be a little tired of my domain.” “That’s because it’s a cage,” Bob tells me.

I like colorful tales with black beginnings and stormy middles and cloudless blue-sky endings. But any story will do.

“I promise anyway.”

“It’s a cage.”

I watch an ad for underarm deodorant. “How do you know who’s who if they don’t smell?” I ask Bob. “Humans reek,” Bob replies. “They just don’t notice because they have incompetent noses.”

Is there anything sweeter than the touch of another as she pulls a dead bug from your fur?