"God help the children of the flower children" is the theme of Paterson's ["The Great Gilly Hopkins"], a potentially rich story but disappointing in some ways. At 11, Gilly (who was abandoned by her hippie mother at birth) has been given up by a series of tired foster parents. In her new home, the guardian is obese, sloppy, semi-literate Maime Trotter whose other charge is a timid little boy…. Scheming to escape, Gilly gains the confidence of … her new family by pretending to care for them. To her surprise she finds that she does and that "deliverance," when it comes unexpectedly, causes her wrenching sadness. [Katherine Paterson] writes expertly…. Still it's hard to accept the exaggeration of Trotter's virtues, the implication that ignorance plus slovenliness equals motherly love. (p. 127)

Jean F. Mercier, in Publishers Weekly (reprinted from the February 13, 1978, issue of Publishers Weekly by permission of the critic, published...