>> From the Library of Congress in Washington, D.C. [ Silence ] >> I am so delighted to be here today because I get to introduce Katherine Applegate. I will just come out and say that The One and Only Ivan was my favorite book of the year. [Applause] And I have three small children, and I apologize with all the scheduling I had to bring one with me. And she's used to this, and she loves this event as much as I do. But I don't have to tell you that this book was spectacular. I'm reading mostly kids books as you can imagine. I do love reading, but with my small children that's kind of where my focus is. And I adored this book. It came highly recommended to me by a couple of friends. And I started reading it aloud to them. And that first night, of course, they didn't want me to stop but I had to be a good mom, make them go to bed. So then I took it upstairs, and I read the rest of it that entire night and sacrificed my own sleep. The next day they were so mad at me. You read it without us, I can't believe it, what happens? But that's the kind of book it is. I couldn't put it down. And then my older child who is now in third grade at the end of that spring took it himself, couldn't wait for me to read it out loud. He read it all himself. My first grader he's an emerging reader, he's trying to read it on his own. And this one isn't reading yet, but I imagine she is going to want to read it, too. And she said she's so excited to meet you. She'll be shy but she wrote it. This book is so beautifully written. It is a story that is both heartbreaking and uplifting. And I felt so deeply for the wonderful characters in this book. And I cried and I laughed through the short, beautiful chapters. And even after some of the passages, as you can imagine, I had to stop and pause and put the book down for a minute and just sit with what I had just read. It is just a book and a story that will just move you, and I imagine you already feel that. This book won the Newbery Medal as you know, but Katherine Applegate is a celebrated author way before this book was written. She wrote the Buffalo Storm, Roscoe Riley Rules, Animorphs. Her novel Home of the Brave received the 2008 Golden Kite Award for best fiction, the Bank Street 2008 Josette Frank Award for children's fiction, and the Judy Lopez Memorial Award Honor. This book is a life changing book, and I don't know if that was her intention. And I don't want to go more into detail about my personal beliefs about it, but I think there are going to be some changes in my life as a result of this book. So, ladies and gentlemen, the wonderful Katherine Applegate. [ Applause ] >> Oh, wow, I think that may be the best introduction I've ever had. I feel like I should just leave now because you're going to be disappointed. It is really, really cool to be here. I have never been here before, but I have heard such wonderful things about it. You guys are so lucky to have a festival like this in your own backyard. [Applause] I want to tell you a little bit about how I wrote Ivan because it was an interesting experience writing first person gorilla, something that I'd never done before. And it goes to what it's like to be a writer. Most of what being a writer is like is that you wear sweat pants to work, you don't have a boss, and you make stuff up all day. It is the world's best job. Basically you're paid to be a liar and a slob. So I'm perfectly suited to the task. But you do need an imagination. And an imagination was vital to getting into the head of a real live gorilla. And in case you are not familiar with the story The One and Only Ivan is based on a true story, a tragic bizarre story of a gorilla that lived in a mall in Tacoma, Washington for 27 years before he was finally freed. And when I first heard about that I thought, okay, there's a book there but I don't know how I'm going to write it. So I want you for a few minutes to think about what it was like for me to be a writer and try to get in the head of a gorilla. The first thing you have to do -- we're working without a remote so I have my own personal assistant here, it's wonderful. Now, I know some of you probably can't see the monitor and I apologize, so I'll describe whatever's there. This is a baby gorilla, a baby western lowland gorilla. This is what Ivan would have looked like when he was living in Central Africa. He would have been a few months old. And he was living a pretty good life. This is how he got around. Does anybody know what that's called when gorillas move around like this on their hands? It's called knuckle walking, and they knuckle walk. It's a very secure way to walk. You'll notice they have rather large butts. They communicate in interesting ways. And this is a juvenile gorilla communicating. Gorillas grunt and purr and pant and hoot and do all kinds of vocalizations. But the classic chest beat is the one we all know from cartoons. And the reason they're so good at it is cup their palms first of all, and the males have sacks in their neck so the sound is amplified. But when they're babies, if you were Ivan, you would have been learning all these behaviors. And it takes a while to figure this stuff out. You also have to learn how to have fun, and gorillas have recess. Their version of recess is swinging and wrestling and playing. This is a juvenile who is just learning how to swing on a vine. He's just kind of twisting around like this. But most of Ivan's young life would have been doing things like this. His diet consisted of bananas, mangos, let's see what else, leaves, bark and that wonderful delicacy the termite which is a big deal in gorilla land. This is what his family would have -- gorillas live in large groups. There's always a silver back who is the head honcho, and there will be some black backs, younger males, females and some cousins. So Ivan had an extended family. This is how he would hang out with his brothers and sisters and learn how to be a gorilla. They wrestle a lot. And I'm sorry, I realize -- I was hoping everybody would be able to see this and I apologize. So what you're seeing over here is a lot of just craziness that looks like your average kid in the living room wrestling with his brother or sister. Many of their behaviors are extremely human. And it's really fascinating to see. They travel around when you're young, Ivan would have, on his mom's back like a cowboy on a horse which is kind of nice. And most of the time you are deferring to dad. And dad is a silver back. A silver back weighs 400 pounds easily, has the strength literally of eight men. And they are incredibly bulky. They are all muscle. And gorillas are a little bit sexist. They have a pretty intact hierarchy where the guys are in charge. So that's Ivan's life until one day poachers show up. And poachers are a huge problem in Africa. They capture animals for their body parts. Sometimes they capture them alive, sometimes they don't. Ivan was captured with another female gorilla who we think may have been a twin sister but we're not sure. It could have been another orphan. And he was sent to a cage and transported overseas, and he and his sister ended up in the U.S. This picture, there's a picture here of two little baby gorillas and they're dressed in white. And one of them is Burma. Burma was the sister, and Burma died of pneumonia almost as soon as she got to Tacoma but Ivan thrived. And he was put in a mall. The mall is called the B&I. It's still in existence. I actually went to see it with my kids. And for 27 years that is where he languished. Ivan lived in a house for a while, his first couple years. And that was really interesting because he wore diapers and he swung from the chandeliers, and he had this really bizarre human existence. His owner/caretaker would put him in the back of a convertible, and he would go over to McDonald's and order shakes and fries for his kid in the back. And, of course, Ivan would be dressed in a little suit. And then he'd pull up and the guy would lean over and hand him the fries and be shocked to see a gorilla. But after a while everybody in Tacoma knew Ivan. He was a local institution. He went to baseball games, and he rode motorcycles and he held babies. It was a strange, strange world. He also had a very strange diet. They used to pull out his lower lip and they would pour in Pepsis. He was eating a lot of human food. And that was his life for quite some time. Now, unfortunately baby gorillas, cute little baby gorillas have a tendency to grow up, and they look a little like King Kong. They get really, really big. And suddenly they had this enormous animal, and they decided they had to build a cage. So he lived in a -- most of his life was spent in a 14 by 14 foot cement cell, but eventually the added two other rooms. There was a trailer, there was a little bit of a water feature. They painted jungles so it would be like home, and that's where Ivan lived. And what was interesting about it was early on he kind of enjoyed it. When kids would come to visit they had a class, and Ivan would run up and high five them, and he's roll up poop and throw it at him. That's particular fun for certain primates apparently. And he really responded to children. But he hated men and only liked women who were blond for some reason. He liked women who were blond so much that his caretaker down the road at the zoo had to die her hair black. So he was a very quirky guy. But as he got older he just sat and stared at the wall which is pretty much what he's doing in that particular image. I eventually came across the story about 20 years ago in the New York Times, and the headline read Gorilla Sulks in Mall While His Future is Debated. And I thought, oh man, there is definitely a story there. I've got to figure out what that story is. And then National Geographic did a video. Unfortunately it's only available on VHS called the Urban Gorilla, but if you can ever get your hands on it it's fascinating. And it shows Ivan in that horrific setting. And suddenly Ivan went from being a little Tacoma local celebrity to a national and international cause celeb because people were going wait a minute, this is not right. Nonetheless he stayed there 27 years. This is a little snippet for those of you who can see it. And it's just Ivan, this big beautiful animal, just staring at the wall, a big cement wall just kind of pounding on it. He had a tire to play with. He had a black and white TV for a while. Somebody told me who used to go visit him that he had a La- Z-Boy lounger for a while. But fundamentally he had a very sad life. And as our attitudes toward animals in captivity changed attitudes toward Ivan changed, and people began to get outraged. But that took a long time. So I'm looking at all this, and I've written a lot of books. My husband and I have written a lot together, so like between us like 150 books. And I had even written some Animorphs with a gorilla in them so I thought I could handle this. But it turned out to be a lot harder than I thought. For those of you who can see is my official author photo. It is me sitting in a bed with bunny slippers and pajamas, and I am surrounded by a mountain of crumpled paper. I had my kids get like two reams of paper, and they just sat there all day crumpling it for me and throwing it at me. But that's what writing is. And for those of you who like to write or are learning to write please remember writing is all about rewriting. And you have to learn to love the rewriting because you're going to make mistakes. I got half way through Ivan, and I had this little slip of paper, I've saved it and framed it, and it says the question is do I give up on Ivan or not? I mean I was sure this book was never going to be a book. I was ready to give up. And that is so much a part of writing. And I know that a lot of you like to read and a lot of you may think about writing and remember that. I know your teachers tell you that but it's so true. And if you go into it knowing you're going to make lots of mistakes it's a lot more fun. So I made a lot of mistakes. I knew some things. I knew that I didn't want -- go ahead. I didn't want this kind of gorilla. I didn't want a big King Kong kind of thing, and I didn't want a game and I didn't want a TV cartoon. I wanted, okay one more, this kind of gorilla. This is an illustration from the book by -- Patricia Castelao was the illustrator. And I think she did a lovely job creating a look that was both gentle and intelligent and moving. And while I'm here I'm going to pass this around. This is a picture of the real Ivan. And this is taken by his zookeeper. And I like to pass it around. I meant to do it a little earlier. So just pass it around. And I want you to look at his eyes because you will see -- it depends on the person. You may see a soul, you may see consciousness, you may see intelligence. To me it's really remarkable. It's like looking at a human. Can you pass that around? Thanks. And I was very honored to have that because that was one of the last photos they took of Ivan. He had gotten quite old. He was like 51 at that point. So I had what Ivan looked like and kind of what he might -- I decided he would be intelligent and patient and kind and long suffering because he's been stuck in that mall for 27 years obviously. I needed a sidekick. So I created Bob the dog who looks remarkably like my own ratty little rat dog at home named Stan. And Bob was very useful for comic relief. He's a sarcastic little guy. But he was very helpful also because you need an interlocutor in a book. You need someone to talk to. And the real Ivan obviously didn't have that option. So as I took Ivan's story I began to fictionalize it more and more realizing if I told it journalistically there wasn't much of a story there. So I had Bob, and then I added Julia. My daughter's name happens to be Julia, and I wanted a human character with whom he could interact. I added a few other characters around the periphery and then I started writing. And the first three lines of Ivan read, hello, I am Ivan, I'm a gorilla, it's not as easy as it looks. And that is not just the first three lines. Kids love it when I tell them that's the first chapter because it really is. And the wonderful thing about this book even though it's like 300 pages it's full of white space and illustrations, and that was deliberate. I wanted to reflect in the writing -- I wanted the book, the pages to look like Ivan's life. Ivan's life was very spare. And I wanted it to be a kind of spare sort of prose. And it helped me as I was writing to remember what his life was really, really like. So I had all that. I added Ruby the baby elephant giving Ivan a motivation to want to change because he wants to save her and I had a book. And that's how I started putting all the pieces together. And from there I did lots of research. One of things I was fascinated by was circuses. I've gone to circuses, I'll bet a whole lot of you have gone to circuses. And I didn't realize how difficult and tragic and heartbreakingly horrific the conditions can be for elephants and for other wild animals in circuses, and I tried to incorporate that into the book a little bit as I went. And eventually I felt like I had a book. But, I'll tell you something, it took a long time. And what's been so gratifying is that the Newbery has brought not just my book which is really cool, but Ivan's story and the story of this animal and how humans worked to change his life and get him into a better place. And he did end up in a lovely zoo. And that to me is really the heart of the story that humans came through in the end. There's a line in the book, zoos are how humans make amends. And I think that's more than anything what I wanted to say. So do you guys have some questions? We have a few more minutes and we could to a few. Anybody? I think we may have some microphones scattered about. There's one over there. >> Hi, thank you for your wonderful talk. I was wondering if you could talk a little bit about how you were paired with your illustrator. Do you get to choose from a certain list that you know what their illustrations look like or how does that work? >> The author has nothing to do with it, and that's probably a really good thing. That is so much a question. The editor has a stable -- the art department of illustrators who have submitted portfolios or people they've worked with before. And they go -- in this particular case she had done a lot of animal illustrations that they thought were very evocative. And they had her try out, do a few sketches, and it was a perfect match. But every time they do it almost without fail that's how it's done. There were rare exceptions where an author picks an illustrator or where they work in tandem. And what's so great it's like Christmas and your birthday and everything rolled up into one when you get that first picture and you go wow, that's exactly what I thought it would look like. Or, what? I haven't had that experience. I know some people have. But it's really glorious when you actually see the work they've done. Anybody else? Yes? >> Do you have any more children's books in the works? >> I do, I do. I have one that I got a little stuck on that involved a boy who turns into a dog. And I have another one I'm working on about a little girl who is homeless, and she's living in a car with her family. And it sounds like a bummer but I swear it's not. It's really I think a really hopeful book. And I think it's a story that needs to be told. And there may or may not be a cat in it who can grant wishes. So it's in that kind of form, that stage. And it's so funny my husband is a writer, and we never tell each other any more than what I just told you because if there's the slightest grimace we'll change our entire plot. So nobody out there make any faces. Just nod, not appreciatively, that's a really good idea. >> Animorphs was one of my first experiences with science fiction, the child of [inaudible]. >> Mine, too. >> But I know there's a lot of research you can do when you're creating characters that are found on earth like Ivan. But what was your process like when you were creating these aliens that were featured in the animated story? >> Oh, that's fun, that's really fun because, you know, the sky is the limit. Talk about people illustrating. What's been fascinating is that it has generated tons of fan fiction. And you go online and these kids drew these most amazing illustrations, and they're often quite varied. You take that -- well, of course, they have the cover to work from and, of course, their own imaginations. But it just blows me away when I see that stuff, but it's really fun. In fact, I just signed to do a trilogy where I'm doing exactly that, I'm going to create some species, and I'm really looking forward to it. It's like cooking. I shouldn't use that analogy because I can't cook. So I think it will be fun. >> Why did you decide to name the elephant Ruby because that's my name, too. >> You know it just seemed like such a perfect name because she was such a sweet and smart and delightful elephant. So I'm guessing -- totally she's lived in a circus, she's had no exposure to the real world so she doesn't know what a refrigerator is. She doesn't know what anything is. And it was really fun because that was some -- I think Ruby provided some good laughs. >> I'm just wondering why you made Tobias in Animorphs become a red tailed hawk because it's in the first book and he's hiding from the Yeerks, and all of a sudden he comes to Jake's house and he's a red tailed hawk. >> Oh, wow, you guys. There's always one of you. You know what I usually get, I usually get someone who raised their hand, they're always in the back, and they go why did you end it that way? And then I just leave the room. Well, a hawk was so -- if you're asking did he acquire the hawk morph there were moments in Animorphs where we may have made some minor mistakes because we wrote a book a month. And we had a newborn baby, and it was my husband and I were writing frantically. And so somebody actually put a think online, it was called KASU, and it stood for Katherine Applegate Screw Ups. And it was all the mistakes, the continuity errors that we had ever made in Animorphs. And it went on for several pages. But the reason for the red tail hawk was because it was so poetic. And it seemed he had had such a sad life that I wanted him to have some freedom. I love you guys. You're my favorite readers in the world because you're so passionate. >> I'm a big fan. >> Oh, thank you. That's so great. [Applause] I think we have time for one more question. >> When you were researching for the book, did you meet Ivan, and if you did what was it like to meet him. >> Oh, I tried. I sat outside the Atlanta Zoo with my daughter in the rain for, oh I think it was three hours, and she was not happy. And he never came out because he hated rain. And I was so disappointed until I realized, you know what, he was exercising some control over his life. And how sweet was that? It was funny, I'll tell you one quick story about Ivan. He hated anything damp. So he carried around burlap coffee bags with him like a baby. You know like a little kid carries a blanky around, well for Ivan it was a burlap coffee bag. And he would put it under his butt and under his hands, and he would walk around on the grass like that because he didn't like to get wet. He was a very fussy guy. But I always thought that was so sweet. And at his memorial service they draped a burlap bag over his plaque so everybody would know, and it was very touching. Listen, thank you so much. You have been an absolutely perfect audience. [ Applause ] >> This has been a presentation of the Library of Congress.