The Great Gilly Hopkins

Scholastic Books
Katherine Paterson ("Jacob have I loved", "Bridge to Terabithia", both Newberry Medal winners- 2 time recipient of the National Book Award for Children's Literature, several novels listed on the American Library Association's Notable Children's Books)
0-590-61389-8
148 pages, paperback
$3.95

Found this book last weekend & just finished reading it in a couple of hours.

Wow.

The book is dedicated:
"For Mary from her real and adopted mother with love"

There is enough meat and bones here for all of us parents but it's geared for kids to be able to follow and grasp (told mostly from the child's point of view). In the first couple of chapters there are a LOT of things that this kid thinks that I'd like to Quote here, but y'know-"No part of this book may be reproduced, blah blah...."

It's the story of a girl abandoned near birth, bouncing through the System, growing more hardened on every stop and learning how to more effectively sabotage placements. She starts to soften up a little on one stop, only to realize that she has already cut her own throat (figuratively speaking, of course) and thrown away what might have been her only chance of escaping RAD for a chance meeting with her glorified birth mother. I don't wanna give away the whole story, so lets just say that it didn't turn out like she had dreamed (but rather, like most of us know it will). Plenty of lying, stealing, forcing back emotion, and general RADdiness to go around. This one is going to the top of dd's "to read" list.

....here's what you see on the back cover, that peaks your interest to buy the book:

Gilly Hopkins is nobody's kid.

The one thing Gilly wants is a home of her own. If only she could find her mother, Courtney, and live with her. Instead, she finds herself in another ugly Foster Home, the responsibility of frumpy Maime Trotter, who is almost illiterate. How can The Great Gilly Hopkins be expected to tolerate Maime, or a freaky foster brother named William Ernest? Or a poetry loving black man who lives next door but is considered part of the "family"?

At first Gilly despises them all. Then she finds herself being slowly drawn into their circle of love. But if there's anything her short life has taught her, it's that a person's got to be tough. Determined not to care, Gilly engineers her own rescue. Unfortunately, the rescue doesn't turn out the way Gilly plans and she realizes too late that she really never wanted to be rescued at all- she just wanted to be wanted.