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Summary: Make Lemonade Amanda G Mrs.Olivette
Review: I think that the book Make Lemonade byVirginia Euwer Wolff is an excellent book. Its a perfect example of how some people live their lives today. It had a lot of drama and it was so interesting that u could never tell what exactly was going to happen next.
The book's story was basically about Lavaughn's( a teenage girl) teen life. Her father died when she was a child so, her mother was an only parent for the majority of her life. Her mother was one of those control freak mothers who really only want the best for their child. She made sure Lavaughn was an A+ student and would be able to get a scholar ship to go to college to have a good life for the future.
Lavaughn was just entering ninth grade and needed something to do on her free time besides her homework. She found an ad on the school bulletin board for a job as a baby-sitter. She knew her mother wouldn't particularly go for. She still insisteded and convinced her mother in letting her take the job. After all she would have extra money for college. Lavaughn not only enters a job, but an environment and situation she's never been in or had to deal with before. Jolly her boss or the mother of the kids Lavaughn baby-sits for, lives on the worst side of town in a dirty broken down two bedroom apartment. She never graduated high school and the father of her kids took off. She had a factory job and never graduated high school. As the story goes on Jolly's life seems to be getting worse and when you think the most horrible things may occur, some things get turned around. While Lavaughn's grades are dropping and her mother always seems to be angry with her, throughout the book, she learns more important things. How real life is on your own and making the best decisions and taking the best opportunities. In the END..............your just going to have to read the book and find out for yourself.
I strongly recommend this book to people who like stories that teach a lesson and have a certain sense of reality to them.
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Summary: Make Lemonade
Review: Virginia Wolff used a unique style in Make Lemonade, one that I have never seen before; it is a style with incomplete sentences that make so much sense. The choppiness of the sentences had an interesting effect on how I read. It made me feel like I was right next to LaVaughn as she was telling me the story.
Make Lemonade is a story of a 14-year-old girl named LaVaughn, who babysits for a single 17-year-old mother of two. LaVaughn is torn between caring too much for the young mother and her children and achieving her goal of going to college and getting away from the poverty she is so used to.
LaVaughn has such a strong friendship with Jolly that she cannot bear to let her ruin her life or get any farther behind. In a way, LaVaughn has taken on the mother role in her new family, babysitting for Jolly's two children and going above-and-beyond the limits of a teenage babysitter. Even though she is only a child herself, LaVaughn is determined to Jolly. It takes much time and effort on LaVaughn's part, and causes her goals to slip away from her for a brief moment. She convinces Jolly to try to pick herself up and join a program for young mothers through the high school. Jolly eventually does put aside some of her pride and accepts the help of this 'Moms Up' program. This allows LaVaughn to continue with her life, and be the successful young teenager that she was so set on being.
Make Lemonade was an interesting book with many 'questionable' issues that aren't seen in many books: LaVaughn's family structure, 17-year-old mother of two, abuse, etc. These issues should definitely be addressed to teen readers, and Virginia Wolff did just that.
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Summary: Make Lemonade
Review: I like the book a lot because its like about a 13 years olds life and it tells everything about her and how she needs a job. Her mom doesn't really want her to get a job because she doesn't like the fact that she has a lot going on in her life and that.
Finally her mom gives in and lets her take the job. She realizes that it was very difficult to take care of two kids and there names where Jolly and Jilly. the moms name was Jill. Jill was twenty years old and she just got out of school with the two kids. She decided to go back to college to get a good job so that's why she has to babysit for her It relates to me a lot and that's why I think I liked it. I would diffidently recommend it to anyone. When I looked on the reviews it was kids and older people and they all said they liked it so I think It Is a very good book for all ages over 13. It tell a lot about how she gets to know the kids more and she becomes friends with them. the book was not a surprise at the end and it just stopped that's the only thing I didn't like because you wanted to keep reading it and it just ended. I would diffidently like to read the second book to it so I can learn more about her and how she takes care of the kids.
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Summary: When Life Gives You Lemons, Make Lemonade
Review: LaVaughn is a 14 year old girl who needs to earn her way into college. She gets a job Babysitting for a girl named Jolly, who is only 17. Jolly has two children named Jeremy and Jilly. This book shows how a single mother (Jolly) has a hard time in life and how some unexpecting people may help you. Make Lemonade focuses on LaVaughn's time with Jolly, Jeremy, and Jilly and how they all help each other in different ways. Personally, I loved this book. If you are a girl who has babysat before, you might relate to the horrors and pleasures of a babysitting job. I liked this book so much, I chose this as my piece in Oral Interpretation. It is a great novel that was very well-written. Virginia Wolff is a genius.
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Summary: MAKE LEMONADE
Review: In the novel Make Lemonade by Virginia Euwe Wolff, is a terrific book that tells about a fourteen year old girl named LaVaughn who helps a teen mom get back on her feet. LaVaughn is a hardworking and an A student who is determined to get into a scholarship to a good college so she can get as far away as she can from this town and get a respectable job. Jolly is a teenage mother with two children who is barely making the money for her rent and is in desparate need of a baby sitter. LaVaughn, deciding she needs all the money she can get if not to recieve a scholarship to college willingly takes the sitting job. Soon after jolly gets layed off from her job and can't pay LaVaughn anymore. Read on and see how LaVaughn helps Jolly take control of her life once again.
Some aspects of the books that i enjoyed reading was how descriptive the writer was about Jolly's house. The author would go on about the cockraoches crawling all over the walls and the gunk stuck in between the floor panels that no one would dare touch and try to clean up. This was told in such great detail that while I was readng this book I had a complete picture of Jolly's house. Another aspect that I liked about the book was LaVaughn's perserverance. LaVaughn keeps above average grades, baby-sits, and on top of that helps her mother around the house. All while she is doing this she keeps a strong hold of things and never gives up. I, personaly think she is a very good role model. I also liked how real the hardships of Jolly and LaVaughn had to face. The author mentioned things like Jolly not having enough money for diapers anymore and how vermins were living in her house like there were suppose to be there. I liked this because if they didn't have problems to face then there would be no point to this book at all. On the other hand i also disliked how there needed to have at least one more element to have to overcome. Lastly I disliked LaVaughns mother's attitude towards Jolly. LaVaughn's mother thought that Jolly was an irrespnsible and clueless mother. I think she was being to quick to judge someone she doesn't even know. I would reccamend this book to children wholike short but heartfelt books on family ties.
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Summary: Making money for college wasn't supposed to be this hard...
Review: LaVaughn is a 9th grade student with aspirations to go to college. She decides to take on an after school job to safe money to finance her continued education. The person who hires LaVaughn is Jolly, a 17-year-old high-school dropout and mother of two who needs childcare while she works. While LaVaughn is not wealthy herself, she is not poor like Jolly. Jolly's apartment is filthy and cramped. LaVaughn is stunned at the conditions Jolly's little family lives in. When sexual harassment at Jolly's workplace causes her to lose her job, she can no longer pay LaVaughn for her services. LaVaughn feels badly for Jolly and her two children, so she continues to baby-sit the children for free while trying to help Jolly get back on her feet. Virginia Euwer Wolff has crafted a gripping and gritty look at the difficulties of unwed motherhood. Jolly's fears about finding food, keeping her children, and doing it all while not compromising herself sexually are hard hitting and real. LaVaughn only wants to make money for college, but she is torn between doing what is best for herself and helping a person in need.
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Summary: When life gives you lemons...
Review: Virginia Euwer Wolff really hit a homerun with this book. Make Lemonade embodies and captures all of the qualities that a good book should have. It captures many aspects of teenage life, and dwells opon the misfortunes that some may stumble upon. Jolly is a seventeen year old girl who has had a hard life. Left with two children, after a slew of bad boyfriends, she is having a hard time raising her kids, and giving them just their basic needs. LaVaughn is a very smart 15 year old, and is looking for a job. She sees an advertisement at school for a wanted babysitter. In no time at all, LaVaughn is watching Jeremy, and Jilly, Jolly's children. LaVaughn shares a special bond witht hese children, and genuinely cares about them. Yet in life, things go wrong sometimes, and a lot of times there is then nothing that can be done to make it easier. Read Make Lmeonade, by Virginia Euwer Wolff for a look into the life, and heart of a little girl, with big dreams.
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Summary: Better of the Two
Review: Of the Make Lemonade series, the first is probably my favorite. While they both offer strong points and bare-bones minimum essential points, this one is so deeply touching, you can't help but like it. Verna Lavaughn decides she should have an after school job so that she can start saving for college. She sees a ticket on the activity board that's been there a long time. No one has responded, so she thinks she should. What awaits on the other side of that ticket is the world Lavaughn is trying to hard to escape: 17-year-old Jolly, with her two young children Jeremy and Jilly. It's emotionally draining chapter by chapter. The heartbreaking, straight to the point verse in which it's written cuts right through you. As Jolly loses her job to "Mr. Fingers Boss" and has to find some way to support the family, Verna shows her the love nobody else ever has. She fights off cockroaches and makes up songs for the kids, scrubs the floor. She even takes Jeremy for shoes and pays for them because Jolly can't. The book is an intense look at life in America's slums and one girl's stuggle to escape it. A must-read.
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Summary: Look beyond the title
Review: Before I begin my review, I would first like to say a word or two to the author. Ahem. Ms. Virginia Euwer Wolff allow me to thank you for writing such a wonderful book. I've read many many young adult books in my day, but your book is one of the first to move beyond the text in the millions of ways that it did. You've penned a book that is as carefully written as it is fantastic. So, Ms. Euwer, why on earth did you give it the namby-pamby title "Make Lemonade"? I've never read a title that made me want to avoid a book more. Something called "Make Lemonade" sounds like a more sentimental version of the "Chicken Soup for the Soul" books. Your other books, like "True Believer", have somewhat bland titles, but at least they don't actively scare away the intelligent teens that wouldn't step foot near a book with the overly optimistic title that this one has. To sum up, great book, hate the title.
In "Make Lemonade" we have a story about self-discovery and self-recovery. LaVaughn is fourteen years old and is going to go to college someday. She knows this fact better than she knows anything else. Of course, that means she needs money, and so she answers an ad for a babysitter. The woman (if you can call her that) advertising is Jolly, a seventeen year-old single mother of a two year-old and a baby. As LaVaughn and Jolly get to know one another, the younger girl begins to see clearly the cracks and fissures in Jolly's madcap desperate life. As the two grow closer LaVaughn has to try to simultaneously help Jolly out while maintaining her own integrity and dealing with the guilt and enabling issues of being her employer's only friend.
The book is just as much about the trials of being poor in America today as it is about two girls trying to learn how to create a life of self-sustainability. LaVaughn isn't exactly from the suburbs herself, so she understands the world Jolly is coming from. Even so, she has to figure out to what extent she's holding Jolly back from taking the necessary steps to ensure a better life for herself and her kids. If Jolly's so poor, should LaVaughn give her back all the babysitting money she's earned? Is LaVaughn helping Jolly live in denial if she's merely offering help? Is it wrong that LaVaughn is taking the money of a desperate woman so that she herself can go to college and escape the viscious cycle of poverty? The book moves from practical situations and motions to philosophical ponderings about the nature of existence itself. Written entirely in free verse in a series of sixty-six poems (of a sort) we learn more about the characters and their lives through this unique medium than we could have ever hoped to with prose. Wolff is an accomplished writer, her stories capturing the honesty of the hardships that come with poverty. You won't find any miracles or sudden changes in human behavior in this book unless they come through good hard work. This book can make you simultaneously love and resent Jolly, just as LaVaughn loves and resents her herself. For a book that the author says came out of a dirty highchair, this goes on my list as possibly one of the strongest teen books to have ever been written. Better than "Speak". Better than "Dinky Hocker Shoots Smack". Better, perhaps, than even "The Chocolate War".
With the exception of its ludicrously optimistic title, this book is without flaw. A heartwrenching and exceedingly honest tale, it never bores or cheats. If you want to find an honesty that is at once heart-wrenching and ultimately triumphant, read "Make Lemonade". In our day and age, it should be assigned alongside "Nickel and Dimed" all the live long day.
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Summary: I'm glad I read it
Review: The book was very well written and it made me feel like I really knew the character. All the characters were well developed and are very realistc. I never wanted to put it down and I told my moher all about it. That's how everyone knows that I really enjoyed something, when I keep talking about it. I recommended the book to my cousin and she also loved it. Make Lemonade has a very good story and I believe every teenager should read it.
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