The Great Gilly Hopkins is a Newbery Honor award-winning book by Katherine Paterson. The story is told from the perspective of eleven-year-old Gilly Hopkins. Gilly is a foster child who idolizes her birth mother and wants to live with her again. Life has been difficult for Gilly because she has been forced to live with many different foster families instead of with her birth mother. Gilly is intelligent but difficult to manage. She takes her anger and frustration out on others and does not get along well with her foster families. Gilly has developed a reputation for being rude and uncooperative, and her behavior only seems to be getting worse.

As the story begins, Gilly is sent to live with yet another foster family. Her new foster mother is Mrs. Trotter. Trotter is different from the other foster mothers that Gilly has lived with, but Gilly is determined to escape from this new foster home. She comes up with a plan to try to get her birth mother to come and take her away from Trotter. The scheme does not go as planned, but Gilly comes to realize that the Trotter home is not so bad after all.

This book is quite well-written. The characters are interesting and the story is entertaining. However, I did not enjoy everything about this book. I found Gilly to be quite annoying and even unlikeable at times, although her misbehavior is an important element of the story. Also, Gilly sometimes uses inappropriate and offensive language that I did not appreciate for a children’s novel, even though Gilly and the other characters are portrayed in a very realistic way.

Overall, this book flows well and is quite engaging. Despite Gilly’s brash behavior and improper language, I sympathized with her challenges. Her rudeness and anger seem to be natural reactions to the difficult circumstances of her life. I appreciate that this book also includes kind and loving characters who demonstrate patience toward Gilly. This book shows that there are good people in the world, despite all of the bad things that can happen.

The Great Gilly Hopkins by Katherine Paterson is available for checkout from the Mission Viejo Library. It can also be downloaded for free from Libby.