The One and Only Ivan by Katherine Applegate
My rating: 5 of 5 stars

This story about a gorilla, two elephants and a stray dog living as caged sideshow animals in a shopping mall is sweet and touching. Told from the point of view of Ivan, the gorilla, it is a compassionate look at the world as seen through the eyes of a caged animal. Ivan has always been an easy going gorilla, seemingly content to watch TV and finger paint. He doesn't seem to mind that he's a money-making display for gawking shoppers. But when a baby elephant is added as a new attraction to the Exit 8 Big Top Mall, and a tragic event occurs, Ivan begins to see the world in a new way. He no longer sees his home as a domain, but as a cage. Through his finger paintings, Ivan manages to make a change for the better for all of the animals at the Big Top Mall.

This book would be an excellent way to introduce a child to the meaning of compassion. It's also a wonderful tribute to the power of art. The book is told in short, almost poetic segments and would make a great read-aloud. It is 300 pages long, but the type is large and there is a lot of blank space between the lines of text. In other words, it's a fast read. As an illustrator, I'd be remiss if I didn't mention the wonderful illustrations by Patricia Castelao that beautifully capture the poignancy of the story.

I've always had ambivalent feelings about zoos, mostly because I hate to see animals in cages, but the world has changed and fortunately so have most zoos. With habitat loss a major concern for many wild animals, zoos are in the forefront in trying to save many of the world's endangered animals. And although zoos still aren't the ideal home for a wild animal, they sure beat the conditions that Ivan and Ruby have endured living in a shopping mall.

Applegate was inspired by a real gorilla named Ivan who spent 27 years on display in a shopping mall in Tacoma, Washington. Due to the efforts of animal rights activists, Ivan was finally sent to live in a zoo in Atlanta, where, for the first time in his life, he was able to interact with other gorillas. Ivan was still alive when this book was released earlier this year, but sadly he died on August 21st, 2012. He had been in declining health for a number of years and died while under anesthesia administered to him during a routine physical exam.

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Illustration Friday - Caged

Depicting a caged animal in a zoo is a fairly obvious way to interpret this week's 'Illustration Friday,' word, which is "caged," but it is the first thing that came into my mind. I love animals and even though my feelings about zoos are a bit ambivalent, I love going to them for the opportunity it gives me to see animals from around the world. It breaks my heart to see a caged animal, but on the other hand I know that zoos now play an important part in conservation and preserving species that might otherwise go extinct in the wild. For the most part, zoos have come a long way in creating more stimulating and naturalistic enclosures for their animals. I doubt that zoos even use the word cage today to describe where their animals live. Still, even at the best zoos you will see enclosures that seem to small for the animals that they house.  This seems especially true for the big cats like leopards, tigers, cheetahs, ocelots, panthers and lions. Who hasn't gone to a zoo and seen one of these majestic animals pacing back and forth in front of their bars, or just sitting staring into space?

I have been to a great number of zoos here in the USA - the Los Angeles Zoo, the San Diego Zoo, Seattle's Woodland Park Zoo, Omaha's Henry Doorly Zoo, the Cincinnati Zoo, the Indianapolis Zoo and Chicago's Lincoln Park zoo. It was last year while visiting the Lincoln Park zoo where I was saddened to see some of the big cats on display in very old, very cramped enclosures. All of the cats who were awake at the time, sure enough, were pacing back and forth. So, when I thought about the word "Caged," a big cat in a small, concrete cage is what came to my mind.

I created a number of sketches before I finally came up with something I was happy with.  My earliest sketch is this one from my sketchbook where I was trying to develop a sad lion character.

From there I began to develop my scene, putting the lion in a setting, and adding some human characters.

I had a certain vision in my head of what I wanted the people to look like, but I had a difficult time achieving what was in my mind's eye. The character that gave me the most trouble was that of the overweight woman. As you can see in the first sketch, I had her as a mother, being dragged by her little boy to see the lion.

Then I decided to give her a different look - I switched her to this character, a large woman in cat-eye glasses, wearing plaid pants and holding a bag of popcorn. Instead of holding his mother's hand, I gave the little boy a balloon. By this time, I had also added in the two other children.

Although I think that drawing would have worked, I preferred the idea of the little boy dragging his mother over to see the lion, so ultimately I reverted back to my earlier version. I made a few changes though. I slimmed her down a tiny bit, changed the pose of her feet to make her look more like she was in motion and I gave her a purse to hold. I also took the balloon away from the little boy and gave it to the little girl on the left side. I tried to make the ballon a sort of counterbalance to the sun on the right.

Here, with my final sketch on a separate layer, I have begun to block in the colors. The entire image was created in Corel Painter 11. I used Painter's digital watercolor brushes for the walls of the cage and the brick wall foundation. For the lion and the human characters I primarily used Painter's gouache brushes.

As I mentioned earlier, I had a certain vision in my mind's eye of how I wanted this image to look.  My original vision was much more stylized, but I just couldn't get the stylization to look the way that I imagined it. The finished result is closer to the look of a Little Golden Book illustration, which seems to be a style that I'm working in more and more.

Anyway, thanks for reading all of this.  Comments are always welcome!