Mantua – Each spring, teachers and staff at the Crestwood Intermediate School select a particular book to share with the entire student body. This year’s selection was The One and Only Ivan by Katherine Applegate. All through the week, teachers and students read the story of a silverback gorilla named Ivan.
Ivan lives in a cage in a shopping mall, and doesn’t think about his life before the mall. He is generally content with life in his domain where he watches television, eats bananas and makes artwork that is sold by the owner. Along with Ivan, an older elephant named Stella also lives at the mall. Unlike Ivan, Stella has a long memory, and can remember living other places, including the circus where she learned many of her tricks. Unlike Ivan, Stella isn’t content at the mall, and dreams of a new life at a zoo, which has much wider spaces for animals to live and roam.
As the tale progresses, Ivan finds himself the surrogate parent to a baby elephant named Ruby, he begins to rediscover his previous life and concocts a plan to take the baby elephant away from their abusive owner. Ivan uses his art to make a large picture of a zoo. Human friends help by placing Ivan’s artwork on the billboard outside of the mall, drawing the attention of people who protest the treatment of the animals at the mall. Eventually it is closed down, and Ivan, Ruby and the other animals are taken to a zoo.
Although the book is a work of fiction, the story is based on a real gorilla named Ivan (picterd at right), who was captured as in infant in the Congo, and spent the first 27 years of his life in a cage in a suburban shopping mall in the state of Washington. Ivan eventually was moved to a new home in Zoo Atlanta, where he spent the final 23 years of his life making artwork among the largest group of lowland gorillas in the nation.
Just like characters in the book they read at school, Crestwood Intermediate students ended up at a zoo as well, but only for a field trip. The entire school, students who ranged in age from grades three through five, visited the Cleveland Metroparks Zoo as a part of a school-wide field trip after reading the book and completing many cross-curricular projects and activities throughout the week. Thanks to the generous support of the CIS PTO, every student received a copy of the book and a trip to the zoo at no cost to their family.
“We had a wonderful day,” third grade teacher Jade Giglio tweeted after her class enjoyed their field trip. Several teachers noted that almost half of their students had never made the trip to the nearby zoological treasure. Ms. Giglio shared, “We even heard one student marvel, ‘Today is the best day of my life!’ “
Proof positive of the wonderful things that can happen when children are inspired by their dedicated teachers and a wonderful book. And for those who have enjoyed Ivan’s story, the Newberry Medal award-winning children’s book will be released as a Disney movie in 2019.
