Make Lemonade ANNOTATION
In order to earn money for college, fourteen-year-old LaVaughn babysits for a teenage mother.
FROM THE PUBLISHER
LaVaughn needed a part-time job. What she got was a baby-sitting gig with Jolly, an unwed teen mother. With two kids hanging in the balance, they need to make the best out of life -- and they can only do it for themselves and each other.
FROM THE CRITICS
Publishers Weekly
Poetry is everywhere, as Wolff ( The Mozart Season ) proves by fashioning her novel with meltingly lyric blank verse in the voice of an inner-city 14-year-old. As LaVaughn tells it, ``This word COLLEGE is in my house, / and you have to walk around it in the rooms / like furniture.'' A paying job will be her ticket out of the housing projects, so she agrees to baby-sit the two children of unwed Jolly, 17, in an apartment so wretched ``even the roaches are driven up the wall.'' Jolly is fired from her factory job and her already dire situation gets worse. Through her ``Steam'' (aka self-esteem) class, LaVaughn decides that it isn't honorable to use Jolly's money to prevent herself becoming like Jolly, so she watches the kids for free while Jolly looks for work. But there are few opportunities for a nearly illiterate dropout, and LaVaughn sees that her unpaid baby-sitting is a form of welfare. Heeding her mother, LaVaughn decides that the older girl has to ``take hold.'' She prods Jolly to go back to school, where the skills she learns not only change her life but save that of her baby. Radiant with hope, this keenly observed and poignant novel is a stellar addition to YA literature. Ages 11-14. (May)
The ALAN Review - Joyce C. Lackie
Trying to raise money for college and a better life, fourteen-year-old LaVaughn babysits for Jolly, a single mother, in her squalid apartment. Seventeen and almost illiterate, Jolly has two children and works nights in a factory. LaVaughn, drawn into Jolly's problems, begins babysitting for free and seeing her grades suffer. She ultimately coaxes an unwilling Jolly into a Moms Up Program, where Jolly begins to turn her life around. Wolff's lyrical style appears like poetry on the page, the lines of text broken into natural phrases. Told from LaVaughn's point of view, the narrative captures the poignant relationship between LaVaughn and Jolly's dirty but charming children, creating a sensitive and caring heroine. The book's strongest appeal will be to junior high girls. In an age of music videos demeaning to young women, Make Lemonade presents a strong message on survival skills and how to develop them.
School Library Journal
Gr 7-12-- ``This word COLLEGE is in my house,/ and you have to walk around it in the rooms/ like furniture.'' So LaVaughn, an urban 14-year-old, tries to earn the money she needs to make college a reality. She and her mother are a solid two-person family. When LaVaughn takes a job babysitting for Jolly, an abused, 17-year-old single parent who lives with her two children in squalor, her mother is not sure it's a good idea. How the girl's steady support helps Jolly to bootstrap herself into better times and how Jolly, in turn, helps her young friend to clarify her own values are the subjects of this complex, powerful narrative. The themes of parental love, sexual harassment, abuse, independence, and the value of education are its underpinnings. LaVaughn is a bright, compassionate teen who is a foil for Jolly, whose only brief role model was a foster parent, Gram, who died. The dynamics between the two young women are multidimensional and elastic--absolutely credible. LaVaughn's mother is a complete character, too, and even Jolly's kids become real. The tale is told in natural first-person, and in rhythmic prose arranged in open verse. The poetic form emphasizes the flow of the teenager's language and thought. The form invites readers to drop some preconceptions about novels, and they will find the plot and characters riveting. Make Lemonade is a triumphant, outstanding story. --Carolyn Noah, Central Mass. Regional Library System, Worcester, MA
School Library Journal
Gr 7-12-Narrator Heather Simms brings to life 14-year-old LaVaughn, a powerful character in the novel by Virginia Euwer Wolff (Holt, 1993). Living in the projects but determined to be the first person in her family to go on to college, LaVaughn takes a job babysitting for Jolly, the teenage mother of two-year-old Jeremy and baby Jilly, whose life is the epitome of disorganization. With warmth, humor, and a voice blending street smarts and innocent naivete, Simms' melodious words draw listeners into the world of unwed parenthood, the struggle for a better life, and the deepening friendship between LaVaughn and Jolly. Written in the first person, the 66 short chapters of this powerful coming-of-age story portray life in all its gritty and sometimes heartbreaking reality, while at the same time conveying a message of inspiration and hope captured in the saying "when life gives you lemons, make lemonade." Wolff's writing leaves listeners with no option but to root enthusiastically for both LaVaughn and Jolly, and to rush to the shelves for the sequel, True Believer (Atheneum, 2001). This stunning work belongs in every public and high school library.-Cindy Lombardo, Orrville Public Library, OH Copyright 2002 Cahners Business Information.
AudioFile
How can a 14-year-old babysitter make up for the parents, the husband, the whole support system that 17-year-old single mother Jolly needs—and doesn't have? LaVaughn is every bit as determined to help the struggling ghetto family she babysits for as she is to save money for college. This is the first in Euwer Wolf's LaVaughn triology. Her second, TRUE BELIEVER, won Newbery honors this year. LaVaughn is a girl worth following, a girl whose observations are full of humor and honesty. Narrator Heather Alicia Simms captures the ghetto cadences that put listeners right in the middle of Jolly's cockroach-infested living room. When Simms draws out LaVaughn's name to emphasize Jolly's anger, it's like overhearing girls talking on a corner—very real and in the moment. M.C. (c) AudioFile 2002, Portland, Maine
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