A review by lokipokey75
The Great Gilly Hopkins by Katherine Paterson

3.0

A short, smart children's book with an unexpected ending, The Great Gilly Hopkins is a well-focused look at the life of a young, trouble-making child in her new adoptive home. Gilly's portrayed quite sympathetically through her past experiences with other, unsuccessful families and this helps the reader root for her in her attempts to get away from Trotter. Her precocious personality shines through, even with the third-person narrative, and by the end, we really get to see her transformation. Trotter and the rest also get nice characterizations and are a believable, colorful cast. I feel like it should have been a little longer in showing Gilly's gradual change, but this is still a good book for kids that I think some adults would be surprised by.