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The One and Only Ivan
Trailblazers · 4th–6th
Ivan says he has “learned not to get my hopes up.” Is that a kind of peace, or a kind of giving up?
The tension Ivan answers one human belief after another (he understands their speech, the billboard’s angry animal is “a mistake,” his names are “not me”), but when he comes to the belief that gorillas don’t “remember our pasts or ponder our futures,” he lets it stand: “Come to think of it, I suppose they have a point.”
Meeting Ivan: notice what he corrects about his names, the billboard and the visitors at the glass, and what slips out between the jokes, from a toy called Not-Tag to a silverback with no troop to guard.
Ivan, a gorilla who lives in a glass-walled space at the Exit 8 Big Top Mall and Video Arcade, introduces himself and answers what humans believe about gorillas. He describes his names, the mall and his friends Stella and Bob, the billboard that draws him angry, a seal who ate one hundred pennies, the glass a weary man wipes each night, Julia and her crayons, and his memory of painting on his mother’s back. The reading ends with Ivan thinking about “what is, not what could be.”
Start with the three names people call Ivan and the line that follows them: “The names are mine, but they’re not me.” Ask the student what a person is like who can say that about his own names.
Retell The student tells the reading back in order: Ivan’s names, his patience, the mall and the billboard, the seal, the glass and the noseprint, Julia and Not-Tag, his drawings, his mother’s back, and the closing thoughts on imagination.
Imitate the author After copying, the student writes three sentences in the same pattern about something they look after: a short, plain opening, a longer sentence saying what it is for, and a last sentence that begins with the words “Here in my” and finishes the thought.
Debate Take sides on the big question at the end of the written work. Each side gives one quote from the reading and says what the other side would answer.
Purpose Close by asking why an author might begin a book with a narrator who jokes about his own cage, and what that lets a reader notice before anything has happened.
Easier Read the section about the glass aloud together, from “Some animals live privately” to “then I am gone.” Talk through discussion questions 1 and 4 only, then answer the last written question aloud with one reason on each side.
On level Talk through all five discussion questions, then have the student write answers to the three written questions in complete sentences, each with at least one detail from the reading.
Harder Ask the student to find the other places where Ivan answers a human belief with a joke, and to compare them with the one belief he lets stand. Then add that comparison to the last written answer.
1. Ivan lists the names people call him. Then he says, “The names are mine, but they’re not me.” What is the difference between a name that is yours and a name that is you?Theme
What it asks It asks the student to say what separates a name other people give from the self, and to notice that Ivan keeps the names while he refuses them.
The names are labels other people put on him, so they say more about the show than about Ivan.
People call me the Freeway Gorilla.
The One and Only Ivan, Mighty Silverback
Ivan can keep the names without being them, because he knows who he is underneath: just Ivan.
The names are mine, but they’re not me.
I am Ivan, just Ivan, only Ivan.
A strong answer A strong answer might separate who gives a name from who has to live in it. “Freeway Gorilla” and “The Ape at Exit 8” are what people passing by call him, and “Mighty Silverback” matches the words on the freeway sign. “The names are mine” could mean he keeps them, the way a person keeps a nickname they did not choose. The second half, “but they’re not me,” could mean he answers with something smaller and truer: “just Ivan, only Ivan.” Another reading ties the names to his job. He says, “I work here too. I am the gorilla,” so the names may belong to the work and not to him. The best answers weigh who made each name.
2. Ivan says the billboard artist made a mistake, because he is never angry. Then he says, “Anger is precious.” Why might a gorilla who is never angry call anger precious?Character
What it asks It asks the student to hold two of Ivan’s claims side by side, that he is never angry and that anger is precious, and to say why he might value a thing he says he never feels.
Ivan values anger for the job it does, so the billboard’s angry animal gets gorillas wrong: a silverback’s anger is care for his troop, not wildness.
an angry animal with fierce eyes and unkempt hair
A silverback uses anger to maintain order and warn his troop of danger.
Anger is precious to Ivan because it belongs to a life he does not have: with no troop to guard, anger has no job in his days.
When my father beat his chest, it was to say, Beware, listen, I am in charge.
Here in my domain, there is no one to protect.
A strong answer A strong answer might start with what anger is for. Ivan says a silverback uses it “to maintain order and warn his troop of danger,” and his father’s chest-beating said, “Beware, listen, I am in charge.” So anger is precious because it protects others. The line “Here in my domain, there is no one to protect” may then explain why Ivan is never angry: he has no troop to guard. A reader could say Ivan praises anger to defend gorillas against the billboard, or because it is the nearest he comes to saying what is missing. The reading settles neither, and it does not say where his father is now.
3. The seal ate one hundred pennies, and Mack said she would be fine. Ivan says only, “He was mistaken.” Why might he say so little about what happened to her?Tone
What it asks It asks the student to listen to how Ivan tells a hard thing and to judge what the short, plain lines do to it.
The plain words are a way of holding the loss at arm’s length, so the hurt does not show.
Mack said she’d be fine.
He was mistaken.
The plain words make the loss land harder: a warm, careful picture of the seal, then a flat line.
I used to have a neighbor, a sleek and thoughtful seal, who could balance a ball on her nose from dawn till dusk.
He was mistaken.
A strong answer A strong answer might notice that Ivan gives a long, warm sentence to what the seal could do, then gives her ending in three words: “He was mistaken.” One reading is that the plain telling keeps the hurt at a distance. Another is that the short line hits harder because Ivan does not decorate it. Either way he never calls it sad, and the reader is left to feel it. The reading does not say outright what became of her, only that Mack was wrong and that she is a neighbor Ivan “used to have.”
4. Ivan says his noseprint is “the first and last and only one.” Each night the glass is wiped, and he says, “then I am gone.” Why might Ivan feel gone when only a noseprint is wiped away?Inference
What it asks It asks why a mark on glass can stand for Ivan himself, and what that says about how it feels to be watched all day.
The noseprint is the one mark that is only his, so losing it feels like being erased.
Sometimes I press my nose against the glass.
My noseprint, like your fingerprint, is the first and last and only one.
Ivan is making a dry joke about the nightly cleaning, but the joke shows that nothing he leaves behind lasts.
Each night a weary man comes to wipe them away.
The man wipes the glass and then I am gone.
A strong answer A strong answer might start from the word “only”: the noseprint is “the first and last and only one,” a small piece of Ivan that nobody else has. When it is wiped, “then I am gone” may be exact for him, since the one mark that shows he was there is cleaned away. A reader could also hear a dry joke about the nightly cleaning, with the hurt tucked underneath. The strongest answers use the glass nearby, which “says you are this and we are that,” and ask what it means to leave a mark that someone wipes away every night.
5. Ivan sleeps with a toy gorilla he calls Not-Tag. Then he says, “Tag was my twin sister’s name.” Why might he call the toy Not-Tag, and not just Tag?Character
What it asks It asks the student to read a name closely and to say what the toy is to Ivan, without being told what became of his sister.
The name keeps his sister close: calling the toy by her name, even with the “Not,” is a way to remember her.
I call it Not-Tag.
Tag was my twin sister’s name.
The “Not” is honest: Ivan knows the toy is only a toy, and he will not pretend it is her.
The gorilla has empty eyes and floppy limbs, but I sleep with it every night.
A strong answer A strong answer might notice that Ivan sleeps with the toy every night even though it has “empty eyes and floppy limbs,” so it matters to him. The name could be a way of keeping his sister close, or an honest label that says this toy is not her, or both at once. The reading does not say what happened to Tag, and a strong answer does not guess. It stays with the plain facts Ivan gives and with how little he says after them: “Tag was my twin sister’s name.”
1. Julia draws clouds that smile and cars that swim. Ivan draws an apple core, a banana peel and a candy wrapper. Which kind of drawing tells you more about the artist?
What it asks It asks the student to compare two ways of making art and to judge which shows more of the artist, using what each one draws.
Julia’s pictures tell more: they come from her head, so they show how she thinks and what she can imagine.
She draws the ideas in her head.
Her pictures are like pieces of a dream.
Ivan’s pictures tell more: what an artist chooses from a small space, and how he stays with it, shows his life.
I draw the things in my cage, simple items that fill my days
I’m not drawing for them. I’m drawing for me.
A strong answer A strong response might choose Julia: clouds that smile and cars that swim come only from her head, so they show what she can imagine. It might choose Ivan: he draws what fills his days, never gets bored, and says he is drawing “for me,” which shows what he cares about. A thoughtful answer might also notice that Ivan calls his own pictures “pale and timid” and says, “Someday, I hope I can draw the way Julia draws,” which hints at what he sees in her work that he does not yet make. Whichever artist the student picks, the reasons should rest on what each one actually draws.
2. Earlier in the reading, Ivan remembers painting on his mother’s back with mud. Later, he says humans think gorillas do not “remember our pasts,” and he adds, “I suppose they have a point.” Does his memory support their point, or work against it?
What it asks It asks the student to test the one human belief Ivan lets stand against what Ivan himself tells us, and to see that he both agrees and shows otherwise.
It works against the point: Ivan remembers cool mud, his mother’s back and her patience, which is a past held in detail.
I do remember this: Whenever I got the chance, I would dip my fingers into cool mud and use my mother’s back for a canvas.
She was a patient soul, my mother.
It supports the point in part: Ivan says he remembers little of his early life and mostly thinks about what is.
I don’t remember much about my early life
Mostly I think about what is, not what could be.
A strong answer A strong answer might say the memory works against the humans’ point: Ivan remembers cool mud, his mother’s back and her patience, which is a past held in detail. It might also say Ivan partly agrees, since he does not remember much and mostly thinks about “what is, not what could be.” The belief had two parts, pasts and futures, and the memory answers only the first. The question is open; the stronger answers keep both halves of Ivan’s own words in view.
3. Ivan says he has “learned not to get my hopes up.” Is that a kind of peace, or a kind of giving up?
What it asks It asks the student to decide what Ivan’s rule about hope is: a calm he has made, or a door he has shut. The whole reading is the evidence.
It is a kind of peace: Ivan finds things to enjoy where he is and does not suffer over what he cannot have.
I am lucky my domain has three windowed walls.
I never get bored with my art.
I’m not drawing for them. I’m drawing for me.
It is a kind of giving up: he mentions what is missing in a light voice, then turns away from hoping for more.
Here in my domain, there is no one to protect.
Someday, I hope I can draw the way Julia draws, imagining worlds that don’t yet exist.
Mostly I think about what is, not what could be.
A strong answer A strong answer might take a side and still honor the other. For peace: Ivan calls himself “lucky,” enjoys the shapes on his painted wall and never gets bored with his art, so not hoping may spare him from wanting what he cannot have. For giving up: he mentions Not-Tag, a wiped noseprint and having “no one to protect” in a light voice and moves on, yet in the closing lines he also says “Someday, I hope.” A careful reader might say it is both, or that it depends on whether Ivan could change anything, which this reading does not show. The strongest answers use one thing Ivan enjoys and one thing he leaves unexplained.