What did I think? That's the question asked when reviewing a book on Goodreads. I freakin' loved it. It is now on my favorite shelf. I loved how she wished for eyes in the back of her head and she thought her head size was "just this side of a defect", how she gave herself a new name and how she "lived to see what would happen next". Ellen Foster her story, her voice....what is there not to love about this 10 year old?

"Ellen Foster" is one of those books I have to re-read every few years. The understanding of a pre-pubescent and otherwise unlucky girl as she deals with the insanity of adult reality in the flatlandish southern US speaks of a seasoning beyond her years. Her transparent naivté is obviously predicated on the awareness of the writer herself, but then, the book is using the disingenuousness natural to a child to make observations about the adult world. This device, hardly new to the world when Kay Gibbons first published "Ellen," nevertheless breaks with an irony that is at once hilarious, infuriating, frustrating, and sad.

lectura ligera pero profunda, me quebró de mil maneras, y definitivamente Ellen Foster se hizo un lugarcito en mi corazón. desgarrador por donde lo veas y primera lectura finiquitada del año. lo recomiendo.

This was a random library book sale purchase, chosen almost entirely for the title. I set aside my usual dislike of child narrators and found an enjoyable voice-driven novella about a fiesty ten-year-old who loses both her parents (good riddance to her father, at least) and finds her own unconventional family after cycling through the homes of some truly horrid relatives. Just as an example, her maternal grandmother sends her out to work picking cotton.

The book is set in the South, presumably in the 1970s or 80s, so it’s alarming to see how strong racial prejudice still was; Ellen almost feels compelled to look down on her best friend, a black girl named Starletta, but can’t deny she’s drawn to her. “Sometimes I even think I was cut out to be colored and I got bleached and sent to the wrong bunch of folks.”

You could breeze through this one in an afternoon. I don’t quite see why it got so many accolades when it came out in 1987, but then again I’m not a huge fan of either child narrators or Southern fiction. Read it for the title character’s voice and the sweetly naïve story of how she got her name.

Favorite lines: “The day [God] made my daddy he was not thinking straight. … my family never was the kind that would fit into a handy category.”

What a charming and inspirational book. Written in a child's voice so sometimes hard to figure out but ultimately a highly emotive, wonderful story of defying the odds.

"Cuando era pequeña pensaba cómo matar a mi padre..."

Este libro nos cuenta la historia de Ellen, una niña que se ve enfrentada, primero, a la muerte de su madre y luego a la convivencia horrible con su padre, un hombre alcohólico, violento y abusivo. Ellen trata de sobrevivir lo mejor que puede, pero pronto se da cuenta que para salir adelante tiene que ser inteligente y siempre ir un par de pasos antes de las situaciones. Así, somos testigos de cómo Ellen va creciendo, aprendiendo del mundo que la rodea (con sus injusticias, violencia y racismo) y de ella misma, de cómo ser la persona que desea ser.

A short but heavy read. Abuse (in several forms) and racism are central themes. It’s written from the perspective of an 11 year old and the roller coaster of her experience makes it feel like a longer book. It’s very well written. The author keeps the voice of the child while presenting heavy themes very well and she deftly handles some time shifts in the story that could have gone poorly.

This novel grips you with the opening line "When I was little I would think of ways to kill my daddy. I would figure out this or that way and run it down through my head until it got easy." Told in the first person, the plot centers on an 11 year old girl growing up in the South, doomed to have cold, abusive and neglectful relatives. Ellen has the strength of character to endure and come through shining in the end. This is a quick, riveting read but since the dialect of the narrator is that of an 11 year old Southern girl, it doesn't always flow well.

This story pulls no punches. Mean-spiritedness, spitefulness, judgmentalness and prejudice are central themes on almost every page. The book opens with 12-year old Ellen, the heroine (the publisher’s description, not mine), entertaining thoughts of killing her father, “I would think of ways to kill my daddy. I would figure out this or that way and run it down through my head until it got easy.” Granted, her daddy is an abusive mean drunk and deserves what Retribution should befall him.

Ellen has no filter on her thoughts or on her mouth. She is judgmental of every child around her, jealous of any fortune they receive, whether it be tangible or emotional. She is just as judgmental of the adults around her, but is wise enough to curb her tongue, if not her mind, when engaged with adults, feigning sweetness and kind. Her prejudice towards blacks may have been just the author’s “sign of the times,” but, for Ellen, it is an ignorant and learned judgment. In spite of her prejudice, her best friend, Starletta, is an unpretentious little black girl from the unheralded bottoms. Ellen’s prejudice is apparent: “don’t drink after her. What might happen?” “Don’t lie down with her. What would people think?”

Although a foster “new mama” shows her the warmth of hugs and the spirit of unconditional love and acceptance, I don’t know the author (Kaye Gibbons, author of A Virtuous Woman) redeems Ellen by the end of the novel. I did not find much endearing about Ellen Foster, nor did I encounter much joy in the story.

Heartbreaking story! Ellen faced more than her share of sadness and abuse in her young life than anyone should face in a lifetime.

Tan sencillo y a la vez tan desgarrador. Me maravillan los libros que son capaces de enternecer y emocionar aun cuando sólo se cuentan penurias.

When there's an Oprah Book Club logo on the front of a book published in the late 80s and early 90s you know there's bound to be some tough stuff ahead. And young Ellen Foster is no exception. When her mother dies from an overdose of prescription drugs in which her father played some part, she is left in his end-stage alcoholic care. Or, more acurately, he is left in Ellen's care.

This book is all Ellen's. And her "voice" is remarkable. She is white southern, obviously on the wrong side of the tracks. The only thing she has going for her, is herself. She survives only by keeping her wits - at all times. The one or two times she slips up, the consequences bring her near the precipice of where no child would like to go. Not being from the south, I at first struggled a bit with the idiosyncracies of Ellen's speech/thoughts. But soon, it was clear Gibbons has given readers one of the freshest voices of contemporary fiction.

Perusing reviews, I read that this book is used in schools as young as junior high. Something about that discomforted me until I just now paged through the book. I had been so hung up by Ellen's bad lot in life I hadn't been able to appreciate the book's humor. It just didn't seem right to laugh at her. Just as we adults can laugh at things from our childhoods which at the time were not at all funny, we laugh at some of the things Ellen thinks and does. Would junior high kids enjoy this or are they still experiencing and too close to the pain of it all? Guess I'd wait until high school or college lit before using it as a teaching tool.