Make Lemonade

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Summary: new perspective of teenaged mothers
Review: LaVaughn, the narrator, has one major goal-- to go to college. Her mother says that not one person in their inner city apartment building has gone to college. To make money for this dream, LaVaughn finds a job babysitting two young children. She realizes that she has taken on more than she bargained for, in dealing with the wellbeing of their teenaged mother. Jolly can barely afford to pay, but LaVaughn senses her despair. She is determined to get Jolly back on the right track, even if she doesn't get anything out of it. The way the book is laid out is startling at first, but it is accurate to the way we think and talk. LaVaughn's way of thinking is catching, and you will find yourself just as wrapped up in Jolly's children as she is.

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Summary: The powerful saga between these two girls keeps you reading.
Review: This book is marvolise. The problems these two girls have and how they are brought together is powerful. I recommend this book to anyone who has made a difference and someones life and didn't even know it.

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Summary: This book showed me how it feels to be poor.
Review: I think this book shows the reader what the charcters went through in the book. When I read it was for a mother daughter book group since I love to read, but when I saw it, I thought to myself 'Oh know this book is going to be boring",but suprisingly it made think about the problems that the character had.

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Summary: When life gives you lemons make lemonade
Review: When we meet Verna LaVaughn she is a fourteen year old girl looking for an after-school job to earn money for college. Her father died when she was very young, and she lives in the projects with her mother. Her mother takes good care of LaVaughn, has a steady job, and is able to pay their bills on time, but she wants something better for her daughter and they both know that the ticket out of poverty is education.

When she meets Jolly, a teen mother who needs an evening babysitter while working the late shift, LaVaughn learns just how chaotic and dirty poverty can be. Even though her mother is not entirely supportive because she knows how needy this single, teenaged-parent family is going to be, LaVaughn accepts the job. Jeremy and Jilly are fiercely-loved but Jolly simply doesn't know how to care for them well because no one's ever taught her. LaVaughn finds herself slowly showing Jolly the things that her mother has been teaching her about self-respect, seeing a challenge through, and living to one's potential. The children come to adore her, Jolly comes to depend on her, and LaVaughn herself learns a lot about herself, and strength, and perseverance as she slowly becomes entrenched in Jolly's family.

The story is told in poetic, open-ended verse that conveys with every nuanced word the inner life of LaVaughn and Jolly. Every phrase rings true and lets the reader a little further into their lives. LaVaughn's voice is keen and smart, naive and loving. Her strong upbringing, her early losses, and her steely determination gives LaVaughn the strength to do what she can to help Jolly raise her kids and get herself a life. Jolly's voice is wry, and desperate, and courageous. With LaVaughn's encouragement, Jolly returns to school to attend a program for teen moms and enrolls her kids in the school's day care. Jolly works hard and her life slowly begins to "take hold." Her education at the Moms Up school gives her the skills she needs when her baby daughter chokes, and Jolly literally saves Jilly's life. Her growth is transformative for LaVaughn, even when Jolly's empowered life means that the two girls must move apart. Both girls undergo real evolution as a result of knowing each other, and both learn how love and attention can bring a person closer to her greatest capabilities.

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Summary: Taking Hold
Review: This novel by Virginia Euwer Wolff was extraordinary! As a once teenage mother myself, I really appreciated the perspective of this novel. It was not the cliché story about a teenage mom told through the eyes of the embittered mother herself, but rather through the eyes of her teenage babysitter, LaVaughn. The descriptions of Jolly (the ironically named teenage mother), the filthy apartment, the struggles to make ends meet, and the inability to "take hold" of a life that seems to be falling apart are incredibly dynamic.

The book is narrated with a compassion and perception that brings an added sense of depth and sympathy to the situation. Through this narration, an unlikely friendship grows between the two girls-one who is working to save money for college, the other who is working to pay the bills and keep her children fed. Both girls are trying to take control of their lives and education becomes the only way to do so.


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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.

Rating:
Summary: Make Lemonade
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.