 Galadriel "Gilly" Hopkins is a mean, brash 11-year-old girl who is headed for yet another foster home.She hates living with different people all the time and just wants to settle in with her birth mother, Courtney Rutherford Hopkins, whose photograph Gilly secretly treasures.Gilly doesn't like the look of her new foster mom, Mrs. Trotter, a "fat hippo", and decides she is going to hate her whole life.