Henningfeld is a professor at Adrian College and has written widely for academic journals and educational publishers. In the following essay, she applies reader-response theory to Ellen Foster in order to explore how Ellen's reading of her life parallels a reading of Ellen Foster.

Ellen Foster is Kaye Gibbon's first novel. Published in 1987, the novel has been well received by Critics and readers alike. Set in a rural Southern community, it is the story of an eleven-year-old child who endures grief and abuse before settling herself in a loving foster family.

The novel can be read as a coming-of-age story, a genre in which the main character passes from a child-like understanding of the world to an adult maturity. Books such as Huckleberry Finn and Catcher in the Rye represent this genre and are two novels to which Ellen Foster has been compared.

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