The One and Only Ivan
by Katherine Applegate
A gorilla lives in a mall. He paints. He makes a plan.
For you if
you want to understand what it means to be kept somewhere that was never meant for you, told by someone who figures out how to resist
⚡ Choose Your Route ⚡
Not sold directly on this site. Support indie bookstores with a new copy, or go sustainable with a used one.
Buy New on Bookshop.orgSupports independent bookstores
— OR —
Find Used on Better World BooksSecondhand & sustainable
$21 MSRP
Reference price shown. Other editions may be available.
Ivan is a gorilla who has lived in a shopping mall for twenty-seven years. He paints. He has a dog friend named Bob and an elephant friend named Stella. He does not think much about what he has lost — until a baby elephant arrives and he has to. Applegate based this on the true story of Ivan, a silverback gorilla who was kept in a Tacoma mall for years. The novel is told in Ivan's voice — patient, precise, occasionally funny, heartbreaking without sentimentality. A book about captivity and dignity and what it means to make something beautiful in the place where you're trapped.
Where This Book Lives
- Setting
- North America
- Voice
- Written by a North America author
Part of a Reading Journey
Related Viewing
Shares a topic, theme, or setting with this book in the catalog.
Everything is Illuminated(2005)
dir. Liev Schreiber
Digging up a family's buried history.
A young Jewish American man travels to Ukraine with an eccentric translator and his grandfather to find the woman who saved his grandfather's life during the Nazi invasion, and a small Ukrainian town that was wiped off the map. Adapted from Jonathan Safran Foer's novel.
Why it’s here: Punk in blending absurdist comedy with Holocaust memory without ever trivializing either — the film trusts that grief and humor can share the same road trip. Pedagogical in showing how erased places and people can still be located, if someone is willing to look hard enough.
Turtles All the Way Down(2024)
dir. Hannah Marks
Living inside a mind that won't quiet down.
A sixteen-year-old chasing a missing-billionaire mystery with her best friend has to navigate love, friendship, and grief while living inside an unrelenting spiral of intrusive thoughts. Adapted from John Green's novel.
Why it’s here: Punk in depicting intrusive thoughts from the inside without turning them into a redemption arc or a clean cure — Aza's experience isn't resolved, it's managed, imperfectly, alongside friendship and love. Pedagogical in normalizing that living with a mental health condition is compatible with a full life, not a tragedy to overcome.
Same pattern, different era
Different time, different place. The same thing keeps happening.
Number the Stars
Lois Lowry
The Nazis are rounding up Jews. Her family hides her best friend.
✦ READ – REFLECT → RESIST
Enemy Pie
Derek Munson
He has an enemy. Dad has a pie. There's a catch.
✦ READ – REFLECT → RESIST
Hilo: The Boy Who Crashed to Earth
Judd Winick
A boy crashes from the sky. He makes two friends immediately.
✦ READ – REFLECT → RESIST
When You Reach Me
Rebecca Stead
Anonymous notes predict the future. She has to figure out why.
✦ READ – REFLECT → RESIST
For the grown-up bookshelf
Same idea, written for a grown-up. Good for the adult in the room, too.
A Thousand Splendid Suns
Khaled Hosseini
Two women. One house. Thirty years between them.
✦ READ – REFLECT → RESIST
Anthills of the Savannah
Chinua Achebe
A dictatorship and the three friends it destroys.
✦ READ – REFLECT → RESIST
The Island of Sea Women
Lisa See
Jeju's women divers. A massacre. A friendship broken for sixty years.
✦ READ – REFLECT → RESIST