Kaye Gibbons Biography

Kaye Gibbons was born in 1960, in Nash County North Carolina. Gibbons' mother committed suicide when Gibbons was ten years old. This lead to the family break up and Gibbons having to live with a number of relatives. Though she faced many obstacles she graduated from Rocky Mount High School in North Carolina and continued to the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill. Gibbons began to write poems about Starletta, which led to the story of Ellen Foster. She is mainly known for her book "Ellen Foster" which was published in 1987, but she has written other things as well. Gibbons first plans were to go into teaching, but once "Ellen Foster" became a huge success she abandoned that idea. She won the Sue Kaufman Prize for First Fiction from the American Academy and Institute of Arts and Letters. She also received a citation from the Ernest Hemingway Foundation for "Ellen Foster".  Other books by Kaye Gibbons are... "A Virtuous Woman", "A Cure For Dreams", and "The Life All Around Me By Ellen Foster". Gibbons currently lives in Raleigh, North Carolina. If you would like to read more about Kaye Gibbons click on these links below:

http://www.randomhouse.com/vintage/read/ellen/gibbons.htmlhttp://www.enotes.com/ellen-foster/author-biography

Plot

The book has flashbacks of Ellens Abusive past and her life living in a foster family.In the beginning of the book Ellen would always talk about ways to kill her father. It turns out she didnt kill her father he drank himself to death. Ellen also talks about her sick mother and how she trys to protect her mother from her abusive father

 

By Anthony Salati

Point of View

Point of View is the way the writing expresses the characters thoughts and feelings through a certain type of point of view. Examples being first person, second person , third person.Though it is written in first person the novel Ellen Foster by Kaye Gibbons , the main character Ellen Foster describes her experiences, as well as the experiences of others in the book. Kaye Gibbons most likely wrote the book in the first person point of view from Ellen's perspective because since she is the main character and she has had the most driving experiences and as the main character she is the one who learns something had the end of the book, hence the plot. Kate Gibbons most likely wanted to show Ellen's point of view because she wanted the book to be told through her eyes. Since this book is written in first person the book uses phrases such as I, they, he, she and them. This is done to keep the opinion of the narrator separate from the other character.

By:Allison O'Hagan, Katherine Papatheodorou, Anastasia Ioannou

Conflict

A conflict is to come into collision or disagreement; be contradictory, at variance, or in opposition; clash. In the novel "Ellen Foster" there are many different conflicts. As a young child Ellen had to face many conflicts most children do not have to. The first conflict is that her father is an alcoholic. To see her father drunk and hurting her mother, it must have been traumatizing. Ellen was scared to be around her father and she was scared for her mother. Then to have her mother die, from a drug over dose, it scared her even more. Now she was alone with her father, and he was still drinking. Ellen would hide in her room or in the closet, until he would leave. After that she was moved to her grandmothers house, and while she was there, her father died. She was not allowed to go to the funeral and her grandmother would always insult her father and her. Another conflict was that her grandmother died and she was then moved to her aunt Nadine's house. The last conflict was that she did not like living with her aunt and spoiled cousin, so she found a foster family.

By. Anastasia Ioannou, Katherine Papatheodorou, and Allison O'Hagan

Diction

Diction is how the author of a book chooses the style of speech she wants her characters to portray and how she wants them to react to certain things.Kaye Gibbons, author of the book "Ellen Foster" uses very precise language to describe how she wants her main character Ellen to get her information and feelings. In the book Ellen is only an 11 year old girl so her language depicts that of a young child that really does not understand much about the world around her. For example in the book Ellen describes the washing machine in her home as the "as a thing, where you put the dishes in a thing, shut the door, cut it on, and Wa-La they are clean. This quote can make it clear that for a girl of an 11 year old she really is not clear on many things , like the washing machine. The author, Kaye Gibbons most likely made her main character talk and act like this because she wanted to show how unaware and clueless she is about many things of daily life.

By:Allison OHagan, Katherine Papatheodorou, Anastasia Ioannou,

Work Cited

• "Reading Group Center." Kaye Gibbons. Ed. Anchor Books. Fall 1995. Apr. 2009 .
  
• Enotes. "Ellen Foster / Author Biography." Ellen Foster / Author Biography. Winter 2001. Apr. 2009 .
  
• Gibbons, Kaye. Ellen Foster. New York: Vintage Books, 1990.