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.

The Ape Star is a heartwarming and unconventional chapter book about love, adoption, friendship, and seeing from different perspectives.

About the Author

Frida Nilsson is a leading Swedish author who has been an August Prize nominee three times and won the Astrid Lindgren Prize in 2014. In 2017 she was selected as one of Europe's best emerging writers for young people through the Hay Festival's Aarhus 39. Her books have been translated throughout Europe and nominated for the prestigious Youth Literature Prize in Germany and literary awards throughout Europe.