Book Review II: Make Lemonade, By Virginia Wolff

Wolff, Virginia
Make Lemonade: A Novel, Scholastic Inc
New York, 1993
Annotation: A fourteen year old girl name LaVaughn is looking for a part-time job and a way to get to college; she runs into 16-year old Jolly and her two kids and the two girls realize a powerful lesson: that you can't do it alone.
Justification for Nomination: Powerful message for teenagers and adults about struggling and being independent. The book is lyrical and provides such descriptive imagery that you get sucked into the scenery. The way LaVaughn thinks is a lot like how most teenagers think, taking it one step at a time, and making some important discoveries about what it means to grow up and become an adult.
LaVaughn tells the story like a wise fourteen year old, and at times the struggles she endures when trying to help a sinking mother are heartbreaking. She is trying to achieve the American Dream and have it all, but poverty is the quicksand that could sink her if she falls in.
An interesting aspect of this book is that I never once found out what race either of the main characters. But there is something binding them both, regardless of their age differences and situations in life, and that's poverty.
The main point of the book is that when life gives you lemons, you make lemonade, and LaVaughn shows Jolly and her kids how to do that when she brings the lemon seeds and tries to plant them. The seeds don't grow until the end of the story, but by then Jolly has straightened out her life and LaVaughn has returned to hers.
Throughout the book LaVaughn's dream is college and it's something she doesn't let you forget. At times I have to remember that she's younger than most teenagers are when they start thinking about college, but for her it's a way to escape her current situation in life. When she starts babysitting for Jolly, you can see what she's trying to escape from.
The book reads quick, but the message lasts longer. I thoroughly enjoyed it from cover to cover.

Speak

Anderson, Laurie Halse. Speak. New York: Penguin Books, 1999.

Annotation: When Melissa busts a party by calling the cops after she was raped, she tries to get through her first year of high school alienated from most of her peers. Melissa struggles with the cruel treatment of her peers and eventually decides to stop speaking except through her art.

Justification for Nomination: This book captures the essence of great literature and is rich in symbolism, but also uses the voice of a 14-year old girl. While Melissa struggles to come to terms with what has happened to her, you can't help but cheer her on to the last page.

Melissa's sarcastic view of high school can be easily related to. She pokes fun
at the different cliques and organizations, as well as the mascots, and the
inability grownups have to perceive the deeper layers in teenage social structures. But at the same time the reader can hear her frustration at trying
to make a voice for herself and fit in some place in the school social ladder.

This is by no means a Cinderella story, which makes it believable. Melissa
isn't out to win the most popular guy in school or become a famous heroine.
Instead, all she wants is to put her tragic past behind her and get her friends back.


One of the best themes in the book is Melissa's relationship with her art and the trees. As Melissa's art skills improve, you can see her slowly make a new friend or reclaim a lost friend, as if each root she draws on paper brings her more grounded and back to earth. Her self discovery and use of talk shows
like Jerry Springer and Oprah Winfrey to find answers is humorous but
heartbreaking as well, because the reader realizes that he/she is the only one
privy to what's going on in her mind.

Anderson performed a masterpiece when she wrote this book, and therefore I feel that it most certainly deserves a nomination. Melinda's powerful silence
sends an interesting message and makes the reader want to keep turning the page hoping to find Melinda's voice.

Genre: Printz, Coming of Age

Miss Ghalia

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