A dirty old Volvo pulls up in front of the orphanage and out steps a gorilla. She’s as thick as a barrel with a head like an overgrown pear. Of all the orphanage’s fifty-one children, it is Jonna who, to her horror, is chosen by the gorilla. She had been dreaming of a well-dressed mother who smells of perfume, and now she’s going to live in a junkyard. 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, adoption, friendship, prejudice, poverty and seeing from different perspectives.