This is as perfect a book as exists in my opinion. It made me cry when I was young and again as an adult. I don't usually love books that make me cry, but here is the exception.

from amazon.com:

Book Description

Eleven-year-old Gilly has been stuck in more foster families than she can remember, and she's disliked them all. She has a county-wide reputation for being brash, brilliant, and completely unmanageable. So when she's sent to live with the Trotters -- by far the strangest family yet -- Gilly decides to put her sharp mind to work. Before long she's devised an elaborate scheme to get her real mother to come rescue her.

But the rescue doesn't work out, and the great Gilly Hopkins is left thinking that maybe life with the Trotters wasn't so bad ...

given to the woman in bagel power whose daughter is a reader