Ivan the Shopping Mall Gorilla is a sad and emotional story story Written by Katherine Applegate and illustrated by G. Brian Karas. Ivan  was a gorilla that was taken away from his family to live with humans. Poachers took him and another gorilla that was a girl to Tacoma, but sadly just after the girl gorilla died and it was just Ivan.  Ivan was treated like a human, he ate like a human, went to movies, dressed in human clothes, held babies and even rid motorcycles. Ones he was 5 years old he was too big to live with humans, so he was moved into a glass cage for humans to look at him. After 27 years of living in the cage people realized it wasn’t right. He was taken to an area made for gorilla’s and lived there for the rest of his life. After he died in 2012 they held a big ceremony for his death and a ton of people came. The theme of the book was lonely and sad. The books message was saying you should have empathy for animals and to not take them from their family. It’s wrong for them to keep a living animal captured inside a cage for it whole life and eventually they realized it.  I thought it book was really sad but it was made to show people what is happening to animals and to aware people about this problem. Even though this book was sad I really enjoyed it and I loved the cute illustrations.