littlest big top on earth, gone, artists, shapes in clouds
- Mack uses the daily circus show, the Littlest Big Top on Earth, to lure people into the mall.
- Stella the elephant is trained to sit on a stool while a dog named Snickers rides her back. A bear, a parrot, a chicken that plays baseball, and a rabbit that drives a fire truck also live at the Big Top Mall. There was a seal at some point, but she died from eating the pennies people tossed into her pool.
- All day long Ivan watches the humans shop and forage at the mall; he thinks they are lousy hunters.
- Ivan lives on display in his domain, separated from the human world by a glass window.
- Humans press up against the glass, leaving their fingerprints behind.
- Like meatballs, the me-balls Ivan makes are brown and round. Just don't eat them since me-balls are made of… well, dung.
- In Ivan's cell there's a tire swing, an old television, and a toy stuffed gorilla, a present from Julia, the ten-year-old daughter of George, the janitor at the mall.
- Ivan once had a twin sister named Tag who died when they were both very young, so when Julia gave him a toy gorilla, he named it Not-Tag.
- Ivan is an artist. Julia is, too, and she gave Ivan his first crayon; he learned to draw with it.
- Ivan wants to draw his dreams, but he says he never remembers them.
- He considers himself an inferior artist because he can only draw and paint the things he sees, and reveres Julia as the kind of idea-driven artist he would like to be, painting things that don't exist yet.
- Ivan is never bored because he has his art. Like a great Zen master, he lives in the present moment, and prefers not to waste his time thinking about yesterday or tomorrow.
- Mack sells his drawings for $20 ($25 framed). Mack is not like a Zen master.
- Ivan doesn't remember a lot about his early life, but he remembers clinging to his mother, drawing on her back with mud.
- He knows that he has always seen things, such as the clouds, with an artist's eye.