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

by Katherine Applegate

Humans waste words. They toss them like banana peels and leave them to rot.

It took me some time to recognize all those human sounds, to weave words into things.

We are conveniently located off I-95, with shows at two, four, and seven, 365 days a year.

can see the whole mall and a bit of the world beyond: the frantic pinball machines, the pink billows of cotton candy, the vast and treeless parking lot.

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

Humans leave their fingerprints behind, sticky with candy, slick with sweat. Each night a weary man comes to wipe them away.

The gorilla has empty eyes and floppy limbs, but I sleep with it every night. I call it Not-Tag.

But even though I draw the same things over and over again, I never get bored with my art. When I’m drawing, that’s all I think about. I don’t think about where I am, about yesterday or tomorrow. I just move my crayons across the paper.

face licking.

Every night, when the stores close and the moon washes the world with milky light,

We don’t have much in common, but we have enough. We are huge and alone,

“Old age,” she says, “is a powerful disguise.”

“Poodles,” he said, “are parasites.”

Homework, I have discovered, involves a sharp pencil and thick books and long sighs.

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

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

“Ivan,” Stella says, “it will never, ever be okay,” and I know enough to stop talking.

“Everyone has parents,” Bob explains. “It’s unavoidable.”

“When I’m drawing a picture, I feel … quiet inside.”

the first streaks of morning sun have appeared in flashy cartoon colors.

“I’ve never asked for a promise before, because promises are forever, and forever is an unusually long time. Especially when you’re in a cage.”

Growing up gorilla is just like any other kind of growing up. You make mistakes. You play. You learn. You do it all over again.

One day, after many weeks of loud talking, Helen packed a bag and slammed the front door and never came back.

My story has a strange shape: a stunted beginning, an endless middle.

Julia touches red again, then blue, and there, suddenly, is the purple of a ripe grape. She touches the blue, and her paper turns to summer sky.

It’s not a perfect place. Even in just a few fleeting seconds on my TV screen, I can see that. A perfect place would not need walls.

“The first one is the head of a school, like Ms. Garcia. The second one is a belief that helps you know what’s right or wrong.” He smiles. “For example, it’s against my principles to do my daughter’s homework

soundless as the wet wings of a new butterfly.

It’s hard work, being angry.

George gives her a tired smile. He goes back to work. His mop moves across the empty food court like a giant brush, painting a picture no one will ever see.

The sun slices through the thick ceiling of trees and the breeze tastes like fruit.

I see deer with legs like delicate twigs.