New Design and The One & Only Ivan

After blog hopping this summer, I felt like I needed to update my blog.  What do you think of the new design?  I {puffy} heart it!  Especially the girl reading on her bed; that is sooo me! 

What else did I do today?  Well, I went to the dentist (yay!), had lunch with some teacher friends (love you guys!) and read a book.

The One and Only Ivan is based on the true story of Ivan, a silverback gorilla who was kept in a cage in a mall for over 27 years.  The real Ivan lived in a Tacoma, WA area mall and never went outside until he was rescued and transported to the Atlanta Zoo.  I researched Zoo Atlanta; Ivan is still living there - at almost 50!  You can read a bit about Ivan here.

The One and Only Ivan is a fictionalized account of Ivan's story told from Ivan's point of view.  In it, Ivan has friends to talk with, to dream with: an elephant named Stella, a stray dog called Bob, and a young girl, Julia, who visits while her dad is cleaning the mall.  This is a beautiful book.  The language is simple and precise.  Gorillas, after all, don't waste words the way humans do.  Everything about the book lends to that simplicity - from the language to the layout to the illustrations by Patricia Castelao. Katherine Applegate has done a masterful job of telling Ivan's story.

This book would be an excellent read aloud; I already suggested to the friends I had lunch with that they read it to their 1st and 2nd graders.  And I'm adding it to my read aloud list.  Which is huge, because I don't add or delete from that list lightly!