ZNote
To a child that has been bounced around from family to family, all while her own mother is always "somewhere else" that isn't here, it seems like love is impossible for Galadriel "Gilly" Hopkins to feel or find. Every lashing out of her anger is a misdirection that she doesn't fully understand, and the incomparable, almost-nauseating Trotter shows through the simple acts of patience, compassion, and community how to live in new light. Affection beyond postcards shows that not only is love never gone, but it will bloom in ways that subsequently disarm and nourish us. The final exchange is simple, but its core is moving.
Completely impressionable when I first was exposed to this story as the stage musical in second grade. I loved the story when I read it proper not long afterwards. Re-reading it many years later, its power has not waned.
To a child that has been bounced around from family to family, all while her own mother is always "somewhere else" that isn't here, it seems like love is impossible for Galadriel "Gilly" Hopkins to feel or find. Every lashing out of her anger is a misdirection that she doesn't fully understand, and the incomparable, almost-nauseating Trotter shows through the simple acts of patience, compassion, and community how to live in new light. Affection beyond postcards shows that not only is love never gone, but it will bloom in ways that subsequently disarm and nourish us. The final exchange is simple, but its core is moving.
Completely impressionable when I first was exposed to this story as the stage musical in second grade. I loved the story when I read it proper not long afterwards. Re-reading it many years later, its power has not waned.