Maybe He Just Forgot to Shave! Gorillas in Our Midst by Richard Fairgray

You know how it is. You get gorillas on your mind and you start seeing them everywhere!

GORILLAS ARE HARD TO SPOT.

THEY'RE MASTERS OF DISGUISE.

That fuzzy-faced guy behind the newspaper on the subway? Can't be!

But just in case it's a good idea to keep a banana or two with you at all times.

Don't say you weren't forewarned!

GORILLAS OFTEN GET JOBS THAT LET THEM WEAR MASKS.

So, see, you've got to watch out for astronauts, scuba divers, surgeons, ninjas..., especially if they're kinda on the, um, burly side.

You may not spot them at the supermarket, but in the fresh produce section, if the sign on the banana bin says SOLD OUT, you-know-who has been there!

GORILLAS HAVE BEEN IN OUR MIDST FOR A LONG TIME.

SURELY YOU'VE HEARD OF GORILLIAM SHAKESPEARE?

OR APEBRAHAM LINCOLN?

But if you think you spy a gorilla, look again. It's probably just an orangutan.

THEY'RE TERRIBLE AT HIDING.

Richard Fairgray's gloriously tongue-in-cheek Gorillas in Our Midst (Sky Pony Press, 2015) offers kids the secret scoop on spotting undercover apes, while illustrator Terry Jones' artwork aids and abets the author's deadpan delivery and preserves the putative great ape's deniabilty with a nod and a wink to savvy readers. Only grown-ups of a certain age can be expected to get the pun in the title,* but although Jones' droll blackline illustrations tell the story well, older kids (those who have at least heard of William Shakespeare, for example) will especially get the wry humor in this one and ape-preciate its sly sophisticated wit.


*Dr. Dian Fossey's classic nature memoir, Gorillas in the Mist.

Home: The One and Only Ivan by Katherine Applegate

I am Ivan. I am a gorilla. I used to be a wild gorilla, and I still look the part.

It's not as easy as it looks.

People call me the Freeway Gorilla. The Ape at Exit 8. The One and Only Ivan, Mighty Silverback.

I have learned to understand human words over the years, but understanding human speech is not the same as understanding humans.

Ivan is alone in his domain, a glass-enclosed area in The Big Top Mall, his only outlet to the world a small break in the glass through which Julia passes him paper and crayons. Sometimes he eats them, but more often he uses them to create art like Julia has taught him. Ivan is an exhibit, but he is also an valued employee of the mall.  Mack the owner sells his art in the Big Top gift shop for twenty dollars,  twenty-five, framed.

Julia is the daughter of the night custodian, a girl who does her homework while her father works,  and who teaches Ivan how to do art  while her father cleans.  Julia is Ivan's friend, like Stella, the old lame elephant who performs circus tricks, three shows a day, and Bob, a stray dog who slips in to sleep on Ivan's big, warm  belly.

But things are not good at the Big Top Mall.  Business is bad, and people seem to have tired of watching Ivan eat and draw and Stella stand on one foot, not to mention  the baseball-playing chicken and the talking macaw.  Mack is worried about  paying the  bills, grumbling about how much Ivan and Stella eat.

Then Mack finds a new attraction, a cheap baby elephant named Ruby.   Ruby is small and cute, and when her picture is painted on the fading billboard by the highway where Ivan has roared for 27 years, new people begin to come to watch her and Stella, both of them happy to be with another elephant.  But when Mack tries to make Ruby learn old Stella's tricks, she refuses.  Desperate, Mack brings out The Claw, a long pole with a curved blade that pricks and rips Ruby's hide, and Ruby gives in, but the light seems to leave her eyes.

"Ivan?" Stella says in a hoarse whisper. "Ivan?"

"I'm here, Stella," I sit up abruptly. I run to a window. I can see Ruby next to Stella, sleeping.

"Ivan, I want you to promise me something," Stella says "I've never asked for a promise before because promises are forever. Especially when you're in a cage."

"Domain," I correct.

Stella doesn't say anything for a long time. "Domain," she agrees. "Never mind. I don't know what I was thinking. The pain is making me addled."

"You want me to take care of Ruby."

Stella nods, a small gesture that makes her wince. "If she could have a life that's ... different from mine. She needs a safe place, Ivan."

"Not here," I say.  "I promise, Stella, on my honor as a silverback."

Then Stella dies of the infection in her lame foot, and Ivan knows he must do something to keep his promise, something to get them all to that better place that Julia has told him about-- a zoo, the Place Where Humans Make Amends.

And when Julia gives him her old finger paints, Ivan has an idea. If he can create a huge mural of the mall animals together in a place of trees and open spaces, a place called HOME, one like the time and place he  remembers before he was captured, perhaps the people will understand where all the animals should be. It will be his Magnum Opus, one that perhaps will save them all. Ivan begins to paint.

Awarded the 2013 Newbery Award, Katherine Applegate's The One and Only Ivan (HarperCollins, 2013) brings home to the reader the loneliness and alienation of captive animals kept in places like the Big Top Mall, away from others of their kind, caged in a world of cement, metal, and glass. Applegate's vivid portrayal of the inner life of captive animals is so insightful and moving that even the youngest readers will empathize with her characters and like Julia, the reader's alter ego, will understand Ivan's longings to return to something like the life for which he was born. As Kirkus Reviews says, "Utterly believable, this bittersweet story, complete with an author's note identifying the real-life Ivan, will inspire a new generation of advocates."

Monkeying with the Classics: Furious George Goes Bananas: A Primate Parody by Michael Rex

George was a great big ape who lived in a beautiful jungle.

One day a man in a funny hat saw George and said, "Ooh! What a big monkey. I want him."

Michael Rex, fairly famous for his parodies, Goodnight Goon: A Petrifying Parody and Runaway Mummy: A Petrifying Parody spoofing Margaret Wise Brown's classics, has done it again with a new takeoff which "apes" a famous tailless monkey's adventures--beginning with his abduction from the forest by the man with the yellow hat.

This George and his man with the funny hat are something else altogether. Wherever the original George was childlike in his innocence and curiosity and his man was well intentioned, if a bit naive about the care and feeding of wild animals, (a pipe before bedtime?) the interests of Michael Rex's man in the funny hat are purely pecuniary.

"Hello," said the man in the funny hat to the zookeeper.

"Would you like to buy my monkey?"

"Well," said the zookeeper, "he's actually an ape.

Monkeys have tails. But, yes, I will buy him."

He put George in a cage.... George was squeezed. He went bananas.

The zoo thing was not working out, and this George takes matters into his own hands, grabbing a bunch of helium balloons from a vendor, tying the zookeeper to them and sending him floating through the sky. The man in the funny hat tries again, this time trying to make a few bucks in the construction industry.

"My monkey would like a job. Would you like him to work for you?" asked the man in the funny hat.

"Sure," said the foreman. "But he ain't a monkey. He's an ape. A monkey got a tail."

In short order this George goes through a series of supposedly lucrative jobs which his greedy guardian digs up for him--first as the headliner in a Broadway show and then as astronaut. By this time Just George has definitely become Furious George.

He did not want to go into outer space. He wanted to go home to the jungle.

That rotten man in the funny hat was the one who should go into space!

And where there's a clever monkey, er, ape in the story, there's definitely a way that that can be arranged.

If Michael Rex's newest, Furious George Goes Bananas: A Primate Parody (G. P. Putnam's Sons, 2010) lacks the warm insouciance of his earlier parodies, older picture books fans will definitely chuckle as this George works his way through instantly recognizable take-offs on the adventures of the beloved monkey of the Curious George series. This one is a good alternative for kids who think they've outgrown the cute little George but will giggle as this Furious George gives his captor his comeuppance and finds his own way back to his beloved jungle--to stay.

Friendship! Just the Perfect Blendship! Little Beauty by Anthony Browne

Once upon a time there was a very special gorilla. He had been taught sign language.

If there was anything he wanted, he could ask his keepers for it with his hands. It seemed that he had everything he needed.

But the gorilla was sad.

"I want a friend," he signed.

Many of Anthony Browne's picture books are noted for their magical realism, and in his Little Beauty (Candlewick Press, 2008), he borrows from both the well-known nonfiction picture book Koko's Kitten, (Reading Rainbow Book) the true story of a signing gorilla who bonds deeply with a real pet kitten, and the classic fairy tale, Beauty and the Beast, with added touches of his own sly humor and accomplished illustrative style.

Gorilla seems to have it all: a big-screen TV, burgers and beverages on demand, and a posh apartment, but when he poignantly signs to his keepers that he is lonely, he gets what he really wants--a beautiful kitten who becomes his boon companion. "Don't eat her!" the keepers admonish, and Gorilla is indeed gentle and loving to his dainty little friend, naming her "Beauty."

The two do everything together, including toileting, shown in one delightfully funny double-page spread, as the two use their respective facilities as a duet, Gorilla on his porcelain potty, Beauty on her tidy litter box. All goes well until Gorilla, reacting to the movie King Kong, which he obviously finds distastefully politically incorrect, angrily smashes the television set. The horrified keepers rush in and, fearing for her safety, try to remove Little Beauty from the apparent danger of a rampaging gorilla.

"Who broke the television?" the dismayed keepers inquired.

"It...was...ME! I broke the television!" signed Beauty.

The combination of the improbability and self-sacrifice of this confession finally melt the outrage of the keepers, and Gorilla and Little Beauty, we presume, live happily together ever after.

Anthony Browne, whose picture book style harks decades back to the still popular Piggybook (which Booklist appropriately described as "a wickedly feminist tale"), here marries marvelously spare but witty text with exquisite pencil and watercolor illustrations, beautifully tactile and humorously detailed, which can't help but charm young readers. As he often does to engage his fans, Browne shrewdly hides images inside images, and he offers just a touch of this technique in the rose which suggest the "Beauty" of the fairy tale and which hides the face of a gorilla within its central petals.

Little Beauty (Candlewick Press, 2008) is, on one level, a simple story of loyal friendship, but one which contains within its art layers of meaning which deepen the story with a touch of fairy tale enchantment.