The Great Gilly Hopkins

“The Great Gilly Hopkins” by Katherine Paterson gives great insight to life as a foster child. Gilly Hopkins, a defiant child, has been through many foster homes. She takes pride in being sly and never growing attached to her foster families. The main issue, life is what you make of it, is proved through all of Gilly’s actions.
“The Great Gilly Hopkins” begins with Miss Ellis, Gilly’s social worker, driving a very disrespectful Galadriel Hopkins to her new foster home. Before Gilly even arrives at Maime Trotters, she dawns the attitude that she is “too clever and too hard to manage”; “here I come Maime baby, ready or not”. When Gilly moves in with Mrs. Trotter, a fat countrywoman, and William Ernest, a mentally slow foster child, she despises them. She later meets Mr. Randolph, that “weird little colored man with white eyes.” Gilly has never touched a colored person in her whole life, and then another colored person comes into Gilly’s life, Mrs. Harri...