![]() It is a novel, but it is written in freeverse poetry. Ivan is Charlotte, Ruby is Wilbur, and there you have it: one animal does a miraculous thing to get the humans’ attention and save another animal. As a matter of fact, Ivan is remarkably like Charlotte’s Web¸ which hadn’t occurred to me until just now. ![]() The reader is expected, like with Stuart Little or Charlotte’s Web, to suspend their belief. In the scope of things, this is not what the book is ultimately about, and it’s fairly ignorable (if you find yourself bothered by it, as I did). It was more like Applegate was proposing that animals really do have the capacities that her characters do. ![]() But there was something about The One and Only Ivan by Katherine Applegate that somehow defied both these categorizations and got under my skin. I’m not averse to a story in which animals are personified but being sneaky about it right under the nose of unsuspecting humans. I’m not averse to a story in which animals are personified. ![]()
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