Embedded Files
The Great Gilly Hopkins
By Katherine Paterson
Chapter 1: “Welcome to Thompson Park”
When Gilly first meets Trotter she says that Trotter looks like one of those before pictures from a diet advertisement. Kind of like this:
Here's an image of an old TV like the one Trotter had in her house in Thompson Park.
Gilly Plays, "Heart and Soul" and "Chopsticks" on Trotter's old piano.
Chapter 2: “The Man Who Comes to Supper”
When Gilly meets Ernest he is watching Sesame Street. Here's the "Sesame Street Theme Song"
After Mr. Randolph compliments Trotter on page 21 she says, “Mr. Randolph, you could flatter the stripe off a pole cat.” What's a Pole cat? It looks kind of like a weasel or a ferret.
Also on page 21, it says, "They went on like that. Mr. Randolph Flattering the fat woman, and the fat woman eating it up like a hot-fudge sundae with all the nuts."
Chapter 3: “More Unpleasant Surprises”
Mrs. Harris, her new teacher, knows where Gilly's name comes from even though Gilly does not. Her name comes from a character in The Lord of the Rings. Here's some Information: http://lotr.wikia.com/wiki/Galadriel
Here's a video of Frodo and Galadriel from the movie version of the book:
On page 31, Gilly is angry with Mrs. Harris knowing more about her than she wants her to know. It says, "It wasn't fair - nothing was fair. She had once seen a picture in an old book of a red fox on a high rock surrounded by snarling dogs. It was like that. She was smarter than all of them, but there were too many. They had her surrounded, and in their stupid way, they were determined to wear her down." Why does Gilly feel like she is being attacked?
On page 34 it says, "She'd actually drawn blood in the fracas." Gilly was proud that she had made on of her classmates bleed in the fight on the playground. What is a fracas?
Chapter 4 "From Sasparilla to Sorcery"
In this chapter Gilly meets Agnes Stokes and compares her to Rumplestiltskin. Here are a few images from books and movies of good old Rumpy!
Mr. Randolph asks Gilly to read to him from The Oxford Book of English Verse. This is a real book. Here is some information on it.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Oxford_Book_of_English_Verse
She goes looking in his ark house, and first she finds a set of encyclopedias. Each book has a title like "Sasparilla to Sorcery". These are kind of like guide words on the top pages of a dictionary. Any words or concepts that would fit in between those words alphabetically can be found in that book. For example, if you wanted to find out about saxophones, you would find it in that volume or book of the encyclopedia set. Do you remember what falls out of the book?
Here is the full text of Mr. Randolph's favorite poem by William Wordsworth.
“There was a time when meadow, grove, and stream,
The earth, and every common sight,
To me did seem
Apparell’d in celestial light,
The glory and the freshness of a dream.
It is not now as it hath been of yore: —
Turn wheresoever I may,
By night or day,
The things which I have seen I know can see no more.
Our birth is but a sleep and a forgetting:
The Soul that rises with us, our life’s Star,
Hath had elsewhere its setting,
And cometh from afar:
Not in entire forgetfulness,
And not in utter nakedness,
But trailing clouds of glory do we come
From God, who is our home.
Thanks to the human heart by which we live,
Thanks to its tenderness, its joys, and fears,
To me the meanest flower that blows can give
Thoughts that do often lie to deep for tears.”
Chapter 5 "William Ernest and other Mean Flowers"
On page 70, William Ernest is watching an old PBS kids show called "The Electric Company". It was as popular as Sesame street in the 1970's.
In this chapter Gilly decides to be nice to William Ernest to gain his trust. She wants to use him in for her plan. Do you remember what her plan is? One way she tries to be nice to him is by helping him with paper airplanes and flattering him. Here's a cool video on how to make a paper airplane.
Chapter 6 "Harassing Miss Harris"
On page 77, it mentions that Gilly had made the highest score in the entire school's history on her national aptitude test. You can compare the test Gilly took with the MCAS test you take in the spring. Here's a sample question from the math MCAS for 4th grade:
On page 78, Gilly compares Miss Harris to a picture she had seen once of a Muslim woman in Saudi Arabia who was totally covered except for her eyes. Gilly says, "Once or twice a flash in the eyes seemed to reveal something to Gilly of the person underneath the protective garments." She is referring to a style of dress for women in some Muslim countries called a burqa.
Gilly says trying to figure out Miss Harris was like an "old Mission Impossible reruns on TV: Your mission, should you choose to accept it, is to get inside this computerized robot, discover how it operates, and neutralize its effectiveness."
On page 85 after Miss Harris gets Gilly's card, she thanks her. Gilly thinks "it had to be sarcasm." Gilly thinks "she'd gone mad like the computer in 2001."
Chapter 7 "Dust and Desperation"
Gilly gets W.E. and Agnes to help her get more money from Mr. Randolph's house. W. E. finds a rubber banded roll of bills like this:
She lies to W. E. about the money. " I gotta give it to Mr. Randolph later when Trotter isn't around," she says to blinking owl eyes. She is comparing the way W. E. is looking at her to big owl eyes blinking. Like this:
Gilly decides to dust Trotter's house, so she can also dust at Mr. Randolph's and look for more money. Trotter asks her to wait until they were through watching TV. She notes that Trotter's voice has gotten louder, so she knows that Walter Cronkite has called it a day. Walter Cronkite was a very famous TV news reporter. Here are a few of his best moments.
On page 99, Gilly mentions that she will use the school pay phone to call the bus station and find out how much a ticket cost. She's coming out of the phone booth when Agnes appeared and demanded her money for helping. Have you ever seen a pay phone or a phone booth? There were many around before cell phones.
As Gilly is cleaning Mr. Randolph's place, she is getting nervous and says, "her heart carried on like the entire percussion section of a marching band doing "The Stars and Stripes Forever."
Chapter 8 "The One-Way Ticket"
Gilly is not a fan of church or of her Sunday school teacher Miss Minnie Applegate who claims "Billy Sunday" saved her. Gilly wonders who Billy Sunday is and thinks he sounds like a comic book character. "Billy Sunday meet Brenda Starr." I had to look it up, but Brenda Starr was a comic book character who was an adventurous female news reporter from the 1940's. Who do you think Billy Sunday is?
Gilly also goes on abut the Ten Commandments and how Miss Applegate doesn't explain them well.
Chapter 9: "POW!"
In this chapter Gilly discovers that W. E. is "not as dumb as he looked." she decides to teach him to defend himself. Trotter calls is boxing lessons and she asks them to do it outside. She doesn't want to see it. She gives Gilly a kiss for what's she's doing for W. E. that surprises herself and Gilly.
Chapter 10: "The Visitor"
At the beginning of the chapter, Mr. Randolph gets the flu and he stays with Trotter, so she can look after him. Trotter thinks they should tell his son, but Mr. Randolph doesn't want her to. Trotter says, "Gilly if he looks peaky, we carry him next door as fast as we can go. I ain't gonna be sued by no big Virginia lawyer." I love that word "peaky". Do you know what it means?
The visitor who rings Trotter's doorbell is dressed in a black felt hat, a black tweed overcoat and an alligator bag. Purses and bags are often still made from alligator leather or skin. There are fake options out there too.
Chapter 11: "Never and Other Cancelled Promises"
At the beginning of the chapter, Gilly can't even remember why she wrote the letter to Courtney in the first place. It says, "But she had done it. Like Bluebeard's wife, she had opened the forbidden door and someday she would have to look inside. " Who is Bluebeard's wife? Sounds like there is a story there! It's actually a pretty creepy fairytale. If you like murderous villains, you can look it up here, but don't say I didn't warn you:
Gilly gets mad at Agnes for telling her that thinking of Trotter and W. E. as her "family" is the dumbest idea. "Gilly spun around and jammed her nose into Agnes' face, her mouth going sideways and narrow exactly like Humprey Bogart's on TV." Humprey Bogart is a famous actor from the 1940's and 50's. He was famous for his way of speaking.
Chapter 12: "The Going"
Gilly realizes she lost her chance at Trotter's to no longer be a foster child. "To be herself, to be the swan, to be the ugly duckling no longer - Cap O' Rushes, her disguises thrown off - Cinderella with both slippers on her feet - Snow White beyond the Dwarfs - Galadriel Hopkins, come into her own." I wondered what "Cap O' Rushes" meant. I guessed from the other fairy tale references that it must be a fairy tale, but not one that I had ever heard of! So, I looked it up and found this:
Chapter 13: "Jackson, Virgina"
Gilly ends up taking Courtney's brother Chadwell's room. He was a pilot in the Vietnam war, but had crashed in the jungle there and never came home.
Chapter 14: "She'll be Riding Six White Horses (When She Comes)"
The title of this chapter is a verse from the song, "She'll Be Coming 'Round the Mountain". I wonder how the song and the chapter connect?
Courtney would be arriving at Dulles Airport in Virginia.
Nonnie and Gilly decide to get their hair done before Courtney arrives. Gilly wonders, "Nonnie a Clairol girl?" Clairol is a brand of hair dye. This might have been a commercial Gilly had seen back in the 1970's when this book was published. It's kind of funny now.
Chapter 15: "Homecoming"
When Gilly first sees her mother she is not at all how she expected her to look. She was plump and "her hair was long, but it was dull and stringy. A dark version of Agnes Stokes's. A flower child gone to seed." This is the second time Courtney is referred to as a "flower child". This was a term given to teenagers and young adults in the 1960's who handed out flowers and talked about peace and love. A "flower child gone to seed" probably means one that is no longer young and in bloom.
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