One and only Ivan

Ivan is the main character of this book. He is a mountain gorilla who lived in a mini zoo inside a shopping mall with some other animals; Like an elephant Stella and a dog named bob. Because the owner of the mall, Mac, wants to use these animals to attract customers. Some of these animals also do some performances , like Stella the elephant , who used to performed in a circus and was later sold to the mall.  No, but he has a special talent:  When he was very young and still lived in the wild, he liked to paint with mud. When he was captured and sold to Mac, the mall owner, his talent of painting was discovered. Mac gave him crayons and finger paint to make drawings that are sold in the mall.   

 Their living condition are very limited.  But at first Ivan was pretty content with his domain and his life because he is always  very calm and easy going. Besides, he does not remember much of his pass life.  Stella,  on  the other hand, like all other elephants has good memory, and knows what a decent life should be like.  Everyday she was forced to perform tricks at the little circus at the mall even though her ankle was already infected from the wounds she got from her previous owner.  She got the wound because she was chained all day long. 

Soon, Mac the owner bought a baby elephant called Ruby. He wanted her to eventually take the place of Stella.

 But, Ruby was not used to preforming at the mall and did not understand what Mack wanted her to do. The only comfort to ruby at the mall was Stella, which she called “auntie”.  Stella tried her best to teach ruby and protect her. Although ruby was still strongly dependent on Stella, Stella knew she wouldn’t be able to support Ruby much longer, due to her injury.  She turned to Ivan and asked him to help protect ruby and get her out of the mall. Because to Stella the mall is a terrible place. Soon after, Stella died, and Ivan began on this mission. 

Now, Mack depended on Ruby to be the major attraction of the mall. He repainted the billboard outside to portray an incredibly cute ruby doing tricks. Ivan did not want Ruby to follow Stella’s track and face the same hardship.  So he  brainstormed  lots of ideas with his friend Bob to save Ruby.  Eventually,  he came up with a solution: He planed to draw a painting, and  ask his human friends to put it onto the billboard, so people will notice it and understand that the mall animals need a new home. He used  finger paint to draw this painting on paper. On this painting were Ivan and ruby, both happily living in a zoo. It’s a very animal-friendly zoo, with lot’s of space for each animal, and the environment is fairly close to how they will be living in the wild. There are also many other gorillas and elephants to keep them company. On the painting , Ivan also wrote the word   H-o-m-e (home).  He  slid the painting out of his “dorm” and passed it to  George, the janitor, and Julia, George’s daughter. George and Julia then put them  on the billboard. Because of this, animal lovers who saw the billboard contacted experts. When the animal experts saw the cruel conditions that Ivan and his friends were forced to live under, they took them out and relocated them into different zoos. As for Julia’s father, George? well… Mac fired him. But he was given a job at the zoo Ivan was relocated to. Ivan had succeeded his mission, but now he needs to grow accustomed to life at the zoo with other gorillas.