[The Great Gilly Hopkins] is a book which, having a choice to make between a happy ending and a hard one—both being reasonable—chooses the latter, thereby finally declaring itself as something rather different from what it has led the readers to expect. For the story line has healthy antecedents in literature from Oliver Twist onward: an abandoned child, stranded in a bizarre place among bizarre people, learns how to value herself and others. (p. 1) Katherine Paterson develops her characters t...

"God help the children of the flower children" is the theme of Paterson's ["The Great Gilly Hopkins"], a potentially rich story but disappointing in some ways. At 11, Gilly (who was abandoned by her hippie mother at birth) has been given up by a series of tired foster parents. In her new home, the guardian is obese, sloppy, semi-literate Maime Trotter whose other charge is a timid little boy…. Scheming to escape, Gilly gains the confidence of … her new family...

Eleven-year-old Gilly Hopkins is a foster child seemingly modeled on the Tatum O'Neal character from Paper Moon and Bad News Bears. She is endowed with an above-average intelligence, a stubborn aggressiveness, and uncanny abilities to lie, steal, and see through hypocrisy…. Young readers might—as Gilly does—find Trotter's moralizing at the end a bit overdone, but they will appreciate the crisp, realistic dialogue, believable and humorous writing, and broad array of unortho...

Gilly—short for Tolkien's Galadriel—is not only a foster child but also, deliberately and blatantly, an enfant terrible…. In its similarity of theme and in its combination of poignancy and humor, [The Great Gilly Hopkins] may be compared with Betsy Byars's The Pinballs…. Yet despite the racy dialogue and the memorably eccentric characters, the author's second novel with a contemporary setting does not measure up to Bridge to Terabithia in subtlety, structural...

Paterson's development of the change in Gilly is brilliant and touching, as she depicts a child whose tough protective shield dissolves as she learns to accept love and to give it [in The Great Gilly Hopkins]. A well-structured story has vitality of writing style, natural dialogue, deep insight in characterization, and a keen sense of the fluid dynamics in human relationships. (p. 147) Zena Sutherland, in Bulletin of the Center for Children's Books (© 1978 by University of ...