{"id":16444,"date":"2017-08-31T00:01:36","date_gmt":"2017-08-31T04:01:36","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.alsc.ala.org\/blog\/?p=16444"},"modified":"2025-05-20T16:22:12","modified_gmt":"2025-05-20T20:22:12","slug":"book-to-film-the-great-gilly-hopkins","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.alsc.ala.org\/blog\/2017\/08\/book-to-film-the-great-gilly-hopkins\/","title":{"rendered":"Book to Film: The Great Gilly Hopkins"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

A recent kidlit adaptation completely skipped past me until I discovered it streaming on Netflix a few weeks ago. The 2016 adaptation<\/a> of Katherine Paterson’s book The Great Gilly Hopkins<\/em> was released in theaters on October 7, 2016, where it had a limited run, and then released to streaming and DVD that same December.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The Great Gilly Hopkins <\/em>tells the story of Galadriel “Gilly” Hopkins, an 11-year-old foster child with a mean streak. When we first meet Gilly, she’s headed to a new foster home with a woman called Trotter, whom Gilly immediately detests because of her weight. In fact, she calls her a “fat hippo.” Gilly seems like the unlikeliest and most unlovable of protagonists for a children’s book. Katherine Paterson’s tremendous writing allows readers find commonality with Gilly’s hurt despite her prickly outsides. The book is considered a classic – it ranked 63 <\/a>in a 2012 SLJ poll of the 100 best Children’s Novels, and won the National Book Award and Newbery Honor the year it was published.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

It’s strange for a book with such an impressive pedigree to get an impressively-cast film adaptation and then be released with minimal fanfare. The lack of attention is a shame, because it’s a lovely film. Kathy Bates radiates warmth as Trotter, Octavia Spencer shines as a teacher interested in Gilly, and Sophie N\u00e9lisse, so affecting in the adaptation of The Book Thief<\/em>, wrings a lot of pathos from her initially loathsome main character. Reviews of the movie were mostly positive, with praise from the New York Times<\/a> <\/em>and trade publications like Variety<\/em><\/a> and The Hollywood Reporter<\/a>. <\/em>Most review of the film signaled out the acting for high praise. It’s a good family film, and would also work well for classroom viewing. <\/span><\/p>\n\n\n\n

Did you purchase the DVD of The Great Gilly Hopkins<\/em> for your library’s collection? After viewing the movie on Netflix, we bought two!<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

A recent kidlit adaptation completely skipped past me until I discovered it streaming on Netflix a few weeks ago. The 2016 adaptation of Katherine Paterson’s book The Great Gilly Hopkins was released in theaters on October 7, 2016, where it had a limited run, and then released to streaming and DVD that same December. The Great Gilly Hopkins tells the story of Galadriel “Gilly” Hopkins, an 11-year-old foster child with a mean streak. When we first meet Gilly, she’s headed to a new foster home with a woman called Trotter, whom Gilly immediately detests because of her weight. In fact, she calls her a “fat hippo.” Gilly seems like the unlikeliest and most unlovable of protagonists for a children’s book. Katherine Paterson’s tremendous writing allows readers find commonality with Gilly’s hurt despite her prickly outsides. The book is considered a classic – it ranked 63 in a 2012 SLJ poll of the 100…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":153,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_uf_show_specific_survey":0,"_uf_disable_surveys":false,"footnotes":"","_members_access_role":[],"_members_access_error":""},"categories":[236,25,1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-16444","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-blogger-elisabeth-gattullo","category-evaluation-of-media","category-uncategorized"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.alsc.ala.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/16444","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.alsc.ala.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.alsc.ala.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.alsc.ala.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/153"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.alsc.ala.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=16444"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.alsc.ala.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/16444\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.alsc.ala.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=16444"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.alsc.ala.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=16444"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.alsc.ala.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=16444"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}