The beginning of the book is pretty sad and feelings of empathy took over for me, but as the story progressed it turned into a cute story about a girl in love with gorillas.The gorilla illustrations in this book are amazing. The story is about a Hannah, that has been asking her father to take her to the zoo, but he always seems to busy with work to pay any attention to her. For her birthday the little girl asked her father for a gorilla, he gets her a stuffed gorilla that comes to life in the middle of the night and the two spend the night together doing the things Hannah wanted to do with her father. The next day her father asks Hannah if she would like to go to the zoo and they go. The gorilla wears her fathers clothes while the two are out on their adventure and when Hannah's father greets her on her birthday he has a banana in his back pocket. I know Browne is known for putting banana's subtly in his books, but I am wondering if there is some hidden point behind him doing so in this book? Was her midnight escapade a dream or did it really happen?
The illustrations in this book are so well done, that I think even if the text was removed the reader would come up with a similar story based of the drawings. As a teacher, I would use this book with the text covered and have the students come up with their own stories based off illustrations. This could lead to a discussion on the importance of illustrations to the understanding of stories. Browne does such a great job showing emotion in the faces of the gorillas. I would use this book with students to point out things to look for when evaluating how someone else might be feeling based solely on how they look. Being able to read others emotions is a valuable tool and children's books are a great way to introduce this concept.
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