Jolly is seventeen. She can't really spell. She doesn't have much of a job. And she has two little kids from two different, absent fathers.
Jolly knows she can't cope with Jilly and Jeremy all by herself. So she posts a notice on the school bulletin board: BABYSITTER NEEDED BAD. No one replies but Verna LaVaughn, who's only fourteen. How much help can she be?
For a while, Jolly, Jilly, Jeremy, and LaVaughn are an extraordinary family. Then LaVaughn takes the first steps toward building her own future, and Jolly begins the longs low process of turning the lemons of her life into lemonade.
Written in sixty-six chapters with text lines that break at natural speaking phrases, this is a startling novel by an extraordinary writer.
Virginia Euwer Wolff writes about tenacious people. In Make Lemonade she tells the story of Jolly--17-years-old, barely literate, with two kids from two different, absent fathers--and how she begins the slow process of building a future for herself. This is another startling novel by an extraordinary writer.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) Copyright 1993 Cahners Business Information.
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 Copyright 1993 Cahners Business Information.
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