In the fiction book I read Ellen Foster by Kaye Gibbons, the main theme is determaination. This book revolves around a ten year old girl who learns is looking for a family to love her. The main character is Ellen Foster. She struggles with trama and abuse after her mother commits suicide. The novel Ellen Foster focuses on a girl Ellen who struggles with abuse by her father After her mother commits suicide by overdosing on her pills. Ellen must find herself a loving home and family to take her in. after her mother's death, Ellen goes through abuse by her alcoholic dad and, because of her father's addiction, Ellen has to pay the bills, go foodshopping, and cook for herself. Ellen goes away to her friend Starletta's house for protection from her father and his piggy friends. Starletta and her parents are black and live in a worn out cabin without a bathroom. After struggling to stay with relitave to relitave she finally comfronts to her school and her art teacher takes her in. At christmas, ellen is disrespectful and gets kicked out of the place she stays. Finally after all the things shes been through, ellen finally finds a loving family, that took her in. I thought Ellen Foster was an interesting and sad book about how a young girl had so much determaination to look for a loving family. A scene I specifically liked was in chapter 4 when ellen is riding her horse dolphin and she is describing the freedom and everything. I liked it because she was talking about how free she is with her new loving family. My favorite quote is I do not have to worry about snakes anymore here. “My heart can be the one that beats, hers has stopped”. I feel that this is when Ellen really feels like shes had enough of her father. Her mother has just died and she feels that her mother couldn’t handle him but she will be able to leave instead of dying. I would greatly recommend this book to teenagers. Parents should read this book too because it can show how kids are struggling through abuse and struggling through searching for familys who actually do care. I wouldn’t recommend Speak to kids because of the difficulty. If you liked Ellen Foster, you might like A Child Called It. It talks about a boy who struggles through abuse by his mother and how he gets through it.
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.
What do You think about Ellen Foster (1990)?
I picked this gem of a novel up at Borders' going out of business sale on my way home from work last night and devoured it -- cover to cover -- in a couple of hours. Eleven-year-old Ellen's uniquely insightful voice kept the tone of the novel from sinking into the saccharine sweetness of an annoyingly precocious child’s narrative. Her descriptions of attempted incest, rampant racism (often her own), and domestic violence are all the more horrific for the matter-of-fact way in which they are detailed. Despite the sordid and tragic, and often shocking subject matter, I found this a charming read. Ellen’s savvy smarts added much needed humor and I adored her unabashed materialism. I don't know if it was the loveliness of the ending or the two glasses of red wine I drank immediately prior to reading the ending, but there may have been one or two tears shed. On sober morning reflection, I questioned if the ending was a little too "The Little Princess" but then decided, hell, we all deserve a happy ending here and there.
—Alberteinsteinmaloney
This is a short but powerful and a lot of the time a painful story . Ellen Foster is a precocious eleven year old girl whose courage and strength and infinite wisdom carry her through things that no child should bear .I wanted to pull Ellen out of those pages and take care of her , get her away from her alcoholic father who for the most part has abandoned her and her miserable grandmother who takes her in for a period of time. But ultimately it's Ellen who pulled me up from the despair I felt for her as she tries to find that safe and comfortable home she wants so badly . I loved how she cared about her little friend Starletta and knew so much more than the adults around her about equality .If you have had this on your to read list for a while , you should read it . If you don't have it on your list you should read it anyway . Just a beautiful little story with so much to give .
—Angela M
I'm sorry, I'm just not feeling this book at all. While I am currently not done reading it I have read the majority and I find the story line to be severely lacking. Ellen is a young girl who lives in the segregated South. She watches her mother take too many heart pills, lie down, and die. Her alcoholic (and already abusive) father continues his spiral into destruction often leaving Ellen for days at a time alone at their house. Ellen is headstrong and takes it into her own to provide money for
—Zoie
