The Ape Star

In this award-winning chapter book about prejudice and justice, an orphan girl is adopted by a gorilla who owns a junkyard. A surprising friendship grows between them.

Jonna lives in an orphanage whose manager is strict and obsessed with cleanliness. Like all the other children, Jonna has only one dream: to be adopted by a well-dressed mother who smells of perfume. But one day, a beat-up car pulls up. The door opens and out step two thick hairy legs with muddy boots, followed by a belly as round as a barrel, and finally, a head like an overgrown pear. It’s a gorilla!

Surely the orphanage won’t let a gorilla adopt a child. But, to Jonna’s horror, the gorilla chooses her…

Eventually Jonna and the gorilla start to get along, until a man from the council threatens to send Jonna back to the orphanage.