EllenFoster

=**Ellen Foster by Kaye Gibbons**= Ellen Foster is told by young Ellen's point of view. Ellen shifts between telling memories of her abusive past and descriptions of her life in present time living with a foster family. Ellen suffers sexal and psychological abuse from her father who is an alcoholic. Her mother and her both suffered from domestic violence but her mother commited suicide by overdosing on pills. Now Ellen is left all alone moving from household to household. Throughout the novel Ellen shows hope that she will someday find a family that loves her, which she eventually does. Racism**- Throughout the novel Ellen struggles to find the place she should belong.She doesn't know if she should belong with the racial prejudices that she has learned from society or with her desire for the love she finds in "colored" people.
 * __[[image:http://www.bookpage.com/allencolibrary/9805bp/cluboprah/images/ellenfoster.gif align="right"]]Publishing Information__**
 * 1) First published by Kaye Gibbons in 1987
 * __Plot Summary__**
 * __Themes__
 * Unity of family** - Ellen grew up in a disfunctional family. She sees other families who have love and supporting relationships. Even though Ellen is very critical she still finds hope in that one day she will find the perfect family that she belongs to.
 * Determination**- Ellen finds it hard to still keep a positive attitude after living with an alcoholic father and a mother who was in and out of the hospital who later commits suicide. Her determination is always tested but she never gives up her dream of finding a foster family who will love her.

Style -__** The novel is written in first person. By this type of style we get to see a better description through her eyes of what she went through.
 * __Period and Style
 * __Period__** - Contemporary


 * __Critical response -__** Critics admired Gibbons way of writing the novel in first person. They liked the way she was able to right the novel in a child's point of view. Other readers thought that the events in the novel were being too melodramatic(exaggerated and emotional or sentimental).

__**Literary Significance**__- Most of the things that Ellen goes through throughtout the novel the same things happened to Gibbons( author). Gibbons has said that some of the examples in the novel that she uses for Ellen—Ellen's mother's suicide and Ellen's constant movement from one relative's home to another—reflect her own childhood experiences.

__**Awards**__- Gibbons won two literary awards for Ellen Foster:
 * 1) the Sue Kaufman Prize for First Fiction
 * 2) citation from the Ernest Hemingway Foundation. [[image:http://lois.co.uk/pasture/images/oxeye.gif align="center"]][[image:http://lois.co.uk/pasture/images/oxeye.gif align="left"]]