Popopo

Gilly Hopkins is going to yet another foster home in Thompson Park, Maryland, with her social worker, Miss Ellis. At 11 years of age, she has spent the better part of her life being bounced from oneset of foster parents to the next. While Gilly is extremely bright, famous for being brash and self-reliant, she is also bitter, angry and cynical from years of repeated abandonment and rejection. Shefiercely clings to the idea that her birth mother, Courtney Rutherford Hopkins, a flower child, loves her and will return to care for her someday.
At first, Gilly loathes her new foster mother,Maime Trotter, as much as the previous ones. Trotter refuses to bow to Gilly's manipulative tactics, forcing her to become a functioning member of the household. Gilly's only pleasure is in bullying theother foster child in the home, a skittish seven year old boy named William Ernest Teague. While learning to live with Trotter and William Ernest, Gilly must also confront her own issues with racism:she dislikes being around African-American people, but both her teacher, Miss Harris, and Trotter's closest friend, a blind man name Mr. Randolph, are African American.
While living at the Trotterhome, Gilly initially gets into trouble as usual, scuffling with other students at school and leaving a racist and rude homemade card for her teacher. The only student at school who tries to strike up afriendship with her is a loathsome girl named Agnes Stokes, who follows Gilly around in spite of her constant insults.
Gilly quickly hatches two plans to escape. She learns that her mother is in SanFrancisco after Courtney sends her a postcard with a return address, and writes her a scathing letter about the foster home, pleading to be rescued. While visiting Mr. Randolph's personal library, shediscovers that the old man has a cache of money hidden in his bookshelf. She manages to pilfer a significant amount of money and tries to use it to purchase a bus ticket to San Francisco,but is...