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Library | Call Number | Status |
|---|---|---|
Searching... Confederated Tribes of Grand Ronde Library | YA FIC WOL | Searching... Unknown |
Searching... Sheridan Public Library | YA Wolff | Searching... Unknown |
Searching... Stayton Public Library | TEEN WOLFF | Searching... Unknown |
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Summary
Summary
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.
Author Notes
Virginia Euwer Wolff is an accomplished violinist and former elementary school and high school English teacher. Her first book for young readers, Probably Still Nick Swansen , was published in 1988 and won both the International Reading Association Award and the PEN-West Book Award. Since then she has written several more critically acclaimed young adult novels, earning more honors, including the National Book Award for True Believer , as well as the Golden Kite Award for Fiction and the Jane Addams Book Award for Children's Books that Build Peace. Her books include The Mozart Season, This Full House and Bat 6. She lives in Oregon.
Reviews (5)
School Library Journal Review
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 (c) Copyright 2010. Library Journals LLC, a wholly owned subsidiary of Media Source, Inc. No redistribution permitted.
Publisher's Weekly Review
``Radiant with hope, this keenly observed and poignant novel is a stellar addition to YA literature,'' said PW in a starred review, praising Wolff's use of ``meltingly lyric blank verse'' to tell of two inner-city teenage girls struggling toward better lives. Ages 12-up. (Aug.) (c) Copyright PWxyz, LLC. All rights reserved
Horn Book Review
Fourteen-year-old LaVaughn accepts the job of baby-sitting Jolly's two small children but quickly realizes that the young woman, a seventeen-year-old single mother, needs as much help and nurturing as her two neglected children. The four become something akin to a temporary family, and through their relationship each makes progress toward a better life. Sixty-six brief chapters, with words arranged on the page like poetry perfectly echo the patterns of teenage speech. From HORN BOOK 1993, (c) Copyright 2010. The Horn Book, Inc., a wholly owned subsidiary of Media Source, Inc. No redistribution permitted.
Kirkus Review
Wolff follows her rich portrait of a gifted young musician (The Mozart Season, 1991, ALA Notable) with a spare, beautifully crafted depiction of a 14-year-old whose goal of escaping poverty is challenged by friendship with a single teenage mother. With the support of her widowed mom, who's always made ends meet, LaVaughn sets her sights on college but knows she'll have to come up with the money herself. Taking a job caring for Jolly's babies while Jolly works, she's soon enmeshed in the young woman's problems--especially after Jolly is fired for spurning a harassing boss. Deeply concerned for the feckless, near- illiterate 17-year-old's welfare, LaVaughn is tempted to give her the money she's saved; yet (as marvelously encapsulated in LaVaughn's internal debate) she makes the tough decision that ``That won't help...I feel very mixed but my eyes stay steady.'' With difficulty (Jolly's too proud to ask for welfare and fears losing her children), she persuades her to enter a high-school program for young mothers. It's best for both--Jolly begins to ``take hold'' of her life--but bittersweet: while LaVaughn's grades go back up, she must relinquish her beloved charges. LaVaughn's narrative--brief, sometimes ungrammatical sentences in uneven lines, like verse--is in a credible teenage voice suited to readers like Jolly herself; yet it has the economy and subtlety of poetry. These girls could be from more than one ethnic group and almost any inner city--the setting is deliberately vague; but their troubles--explored in exquisite specificity--are universal. Hopeful--and powerfully moving. (Fiction. 10+)
Booklist Review
Gr. 7-12. Wolff's latest novel stretches her considerable talents in a new direction. Written in a riveting, stream-of-consciousness fashion, with the lines laid out on the page as if they were the verses of a poem, the book plunges into the depths of inner-city poverty. But instead of focusing on the gangs that spread fear in city tenements, Wolff writes about ordinary folks trying to get by as best they can. Fourteen-year-old LaVaughn, clever yet still naive, wants to go to college, a word that bears such weight in her home "you have to walk around it in the rooms like furniture." To earn money, she takes a baby-sitting job with 17-year-old Jolly, a proud young woman with two small children. LaVaughn's reactions to Jolly and the children, described in her colorful personal idiom, are mixed with the stories that anchor her own life and enriched by a strong sense of place. There's humor as well as anguish in the tableaux she sets before us, with some of the funniest and most stirring scenes revolving around Jolly's children, both fully realized characters. Revealing as well are interactions between LaVaughn and her single-parent mother, from whom LaVaughn has obviously inherited stubbornness and a healthy measure of good sense. Jolly's problems provide the book's drama. Barely more than a child herself, she has no idea how to "take hold," as LaVaughn's mother says, and it's ironic that it is someone younger than Jolly, an outsider, who shows her the way. Rooted not in a particular culture, but in the community of poverty, the story offers a penetrating view of the conditions that foster our ignorance, destroy our self-esteem, and challenge our strength. That education is the bridge to a better life is the unapologetic, unmistakable theme, symbolized by the sprouting of the lemon seeds LaVaughn plants for Jolly's children. At once disturbing and uplifting, this finely nuanced, touching portrait proudly affirms our ability to reach beyond ourselves and reach out to one another. ~--Stephanie Zvirin