This is the seventh week in The Do Not Read Report. My hope with these posts is to save you from unwittingly handing a book to your kids, not knowing what is inside.
Today’s book is one which was made into a movie and is also a Newberry Award winner. It turns out that these are usually both a bad signs. This particular book camouflages pretty well if you just scan it, but once you start closely reading it is quickly apparent that it is filled with horrors you would never want to put into your child’s head.
THIS WEEK’S BOOK SERIES:
The One and Only Ivan by Katherine Applegate
Summary: This is the fictionally-enhanced story of an actual Gorilla who lived in a mall (yes, a mall). A series of really terrible things happen to Ivan the gorilla, a couple of elephants, and a dog. With the help of the daughter of one of the caretakers, they mount a publicity campaign that leads to animal rights activists descending to remove the surviving animals to a zoo.
THIS IS A BOOK THAT IS SURE TO CAUSE NIGHTMARES AND SELF-HATRED IN YOUR YOUNG CHILD.
This book series is suggested for ages 8 to 10 by the publisher which is frankly flabbergasting when you take a look below at some of the highlights of the story.
Lexile score: 570L (ages 8 to 10)
CONTAINS:
- Hatred of humans – Adult humans are portrayed in the story as stupid, lazy, cruel, uncaring, dirty, mean, and even evil.
- Deaths – Lots of these. Ivan’s sister is killed after they are captured in Africa, Ivan’s parents are shot and killed and then beheaded and their hands and feet are cut off. (The store near his cage in the mall sells a gorilla hand ashtray.)
- Trope of despair – Defeatist undertones follow the entire story. Even after Ivan the gorilla and the baby elephant are placed in a zoo, there is tragedy and despair as Ivan is separated from his best friend, a dog, and he is unable to ever talk with the baby elephant again
- The animals are an allegory for slavery – At every turn, this story takes the opportunity to show humans as the creators of all things horrible and evil and animals as pure and good and innocent. Humans have absolute control but are stupid and easily outwitted by an ape who teaches himself to finger paint.
- Torture of Animals – The man who owns the animals in the mall uses a clawstick on the baby elephant to force her to perform. He also chains the adult female elephant and refuses medical treatment for her sores until she dies one night of sepsis and he then throws her in a garbage truck.
(1) “Humans. Sometimes they make chimps look smart.”
(2) “Humans. Rats have bigger hearts. Roaches have kinder souls. Flies have-”
(3) “Humans speak too much. They chatter like chimps, crowding the world with their noise even when they have nothing to say.”
(4) “With enough time, you can get used to almost anything.”
(5) “A good zoo is how humans make amends.”
(6) “My family tree spreads wide as well. I am a great ape, and you are a great ape, and so are chimpanzees and orangutans and bonobos, all of us distant and distrustful cousins.
I know this is troubling.
I too find it hard to believe there is a connection across time and space, linking me to a race of ill-mannered clowns.
Chimps. There’s no excuse for them.”
ABOUT THE AUTHOR
Katherine Applegate is an author of fiction for young children, whose works include Endling, Crenshaw, Home of the Brave, wishtree, the Roscoe Riley Rules series, Ivan: The Remarkable True Story of the Shopping Mall Gorilla, The Buffalo Storm, and the Animorphs series. If you plan to let your child read any of these, I highly recommend reading each book carefully yourself first.