Baby Chick’s Pick – September 2016
The One and Only Ivan by Katherine Applegate 

For September’s book I decided to change it up by not picking an Urban Fantasy YA novel.  Instead I chose a book I read when I was younger.

The One and Only Ivan is one of my favorites.  This is told from the perspective of a gorilla named Ivan.  One of Ivan’s friends is a dog, and another is an elderly elephant.  They were in cages at the front gate of a mall.  Eventually a baby elephant comes and becomes Ivan’s friend, when Ruby gets into Ivan’s cage at night.

I know when I read it I couldn’t put it down.  It was the first time I ever stayed up way too late at night to finish a book.  One of my favorite things about this story was that it taught us about friendship.  Since Ivan lived in a small cage, he didn’t have many friends so the few friends he had were very important to him.  He also didn’t get out to do anything, so instead the owner gave Ivan crayons and paper to draw with, so it became something that Ivan loved to do.

If I had to come up with anything I didn’t like about the story, I would have to say it was too short.  There were only a couple paragraphs per page, which made the entire book go by too fast.

When people ask me what my favorite book is The One and Only Ivan is the first book I think of.