Ivan: The remarkable True Story of a Shopping Mall Gorilla is a picture book written by Katherine Applegate and illustrated by G. Brian Karas. The story is about a baby gorilla named Ivan that was taken from his home by poachers. The poachers sold Ivan to a shopping mall in acoma, Washington. Ivan lived at the mall for 27 years. At the mall Ivan was treated like a human, ate like a human, wore human clothes and Ivan learned things that a gorilla in the wild should never need to know. After a long time people started signing petitions to let Ivan free from his glass box in the mall. Ivan was sold to a zoo and was let free in a habitat with trees, grass and everything a wild gorilla should need. I think that this book can be directed to children of any age since the story is so interesting and a really cool story since it happened in real life. I think that the overall theme of the book is the unhappiness of Ivan and the freedom he felt at the end of the book. I don’t really see a message in the story, I think that its just s story about a gorilla trapped in a mall and let free after 27 years. I love that the book includes real pictures of Ivan at the end of the book. I would rate this book 4/5 starts since I think this story is really good but not as good as some of the other stories we’ve done.