“One” is a colourful children’s book written by Katherine Otoshi. It’s mainly about Blue, a character in the book, and how he gets picked on by Red. According to Red, “Red is hot. Blue is not.”, but even though Orange, Yellow, Green, and Purple don’t stand up to Red, even though they think that Blue is being treated unfairly, they do nothing. 1 decides to finally stand up to Red, and teaches the other colours that they can count too. Then, Yellow turned into 2, Green turned into 3, Purple into 4, Orange into 5, and Blue into 6. Afterwards, the numbers taught Red that if he’s nice, he can be 7, which let Red count too.I think that the theme of this story is friendship. I think that it is about  friendship because even though the story begins with Red bullying Blue, all of 1’s friends learn to stand up for themselves, which deepens their friendship. This book is teaching its readers that they shouldn’t be afraid of standing up to bullies, whether it’s for themselves or others. The great thing about this specific book is that this message is taught through colourful images. In my opinion, this book’s message is very much alike “Hey, Little Ant” because both of these books feature a bully. Both bullies pick on someone weaker than themselves, but Blue takes more time to realize that he needs to stand up for himself than the ant did. Anyways, I found this book to be very educational, and I would give it 4.5/5 stars.

“Ivan; The Remarkable True Story of the Shipping Mall Gorilla” is a touching  story written by Katherine Applegate. It’s about a young gorilla taken from his mother in the jungle at the young age of 6 months, and placed in a shopping mall as decoration. He was named “Ivan” at the mall, and lived like a human until he was 13. He was then placed in a cage at the mall which served as  his permanent home until he turned 27. He was then transferred to a zoo that supplied Ivan’s needs as a male, silverback gorilla. This story, in my opinion, is focused on the theme of loneliness. I think this because this story explains  Ivan’s lonely state in the first 27 years of his life. This story really touched me because Ivan may be the only gorilla who has served as decoration in a shopping mall, but many gorillas have been captured and abused throughout the years and we as humans have obviously not done enough because it’s still happening all around the world. For example, a few years back, Harambe the gorilla was shot at the Cincinnati Zoo after trying to protect a young child who had fallen into the gorilla cage. I understand that the zookeeper was just trying to protect the human infant, but it wasn’t poor Harambe’s fault that a child fell into his cage. The worst part is that he’s the one who gets shot even though he was doing the right thing. I hope that this incident will be the last, but that’s doubtful considering that humans are at the top of the food chain. Anyways, this story touched my heart and if I were a professional critic rating this book out of 5 stars, I would rate it 5/5 because of how well the author demonstrated Ivan’s unhappiness.