Lunch reading: The One and Only Ivan

Last year, I began reading to some of our students during their lunchtime.  The reason I started doing this was because there were some students who were participating in our Battle of the Books program who would have had a difficult time reading some of the books on the list.  At first, the lunch reading was only open to students participating in our Battle of the Books or book club programs.  However, so many other students wanted to listen!!  I knew I was on to something big!

This school year, I opened the program up to anyone who wanted to listen while they ate their lunch.  At our school, students in grades 3, 4, and 5 eat lunch together in two big adjoining rooms.  With the support of our principal and our lunch ladies, we made one of the two rooms my reading room on Tuesdays, Wednesdays, and Thursdays.  Any student who was willing to sit quietly and listen to me read while they ate their lunch was invited to eat in my room.  We ended up with over half of our students in grades 3-5 participating!!  Sure, a few had to be removed for talking after repeated warnings, but that was definitely the exception. 

The book I chose was The One and Only Ivan by Katherine Applegate.


If you have not read this book yet, I highly recommend it!  It's loosely based on the true story of a gorilla who was plucked from his home in Africa and placed in a cage in a shopping mall.  After many years, he was finally rescued and sent to the zoo in Atlanta.  The writing is beautiful and the story is compelling. 

This book turned out to be the perfect book for this read aloud for many reasons.  First of all, the story is engaging.  The students love animal stories and especially ones that have happy endings.  Also, this book has very short, one to three page, sections.  This was perfect because we only had about 10-12 minutes of reading per day.  Since the sections were so short, we never had to end in the middle of one.  This book is on two of the Illinois reader's choice award lists: Bluestem and Rebecca Caudill.  Finally, even though it took us over two months to read, the students never lost interest.

We finished reading the story last week and the students clapped and cheered at the end!  What a great journey we all took together.  Today, I read Ivan: The Remarkable True Story of the Shopping Mall Gorilla by Katherine Applegate.


This beautiful picture book was the perfect wrap-up to our reading time together as it tells the story about the real Ivan.

I can't wait until after winter break when we begin our next book.  Stay tuned to find out what it is!