Make Lemonade (Make Lemonade, Book 1)

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True Believer (Make Lemonade, Book 2)

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LaVaughn is fifteen now, and she's still fiercely determined to go to college. But that's the only thing she's sure about. Loyalty to her father bubbles up as her mother grows closer to a new man. The two girls she used to do everything with have chosen a path LaVaughn wants no part of. And then there's Jody. LaVaughn can't believe how gorgeous he is...or how confusing. He acts like he's in love with her, but is he?

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At 15, LaVaughn already knows that life is hard and that getting ahead takes a strong mind and an even stronger will. Surrounded by poverty and violence, she strives every day not to be just another inner-city statistic: "My hope is strong like an athlete. Every morning when we walk through the metal detectors to get into school ... it is an important day of dues-paying so I can go to college and be out of here." Last year when she babysat for Jolly, a young unwed mother, she saw firsthand how an unplanned pregnancy can diminish options. So she ignores the boys, studies hard, and hopes it will all be enough to get her into college. Then Jody moves back into the neighborhood. Once LaVaughn's childhood friend, Jody is now "suddenly beautiful... He could be in movies the way the parts of his face go together." If LaVaughn's choices were difficult before Jody, now they're almost impossible. What LaVaughn doesn't know is that Jody has difficult decisions of his own to make--decisions that could turn her carefully ordered world upside down.

The second novel in a proposed trilogy, True Believer picks up where the acclaimed Make Lemonade left off. Virginia Euwer Wolff's verse-prose is as sumptuous as ever, and her descriptions of LaVaughn's day-to-day life and feelings are sympathetic and achingly real. Readers will be eager to see where LaVaughn's choices take her in Wolff's next installment. (Ages 13 and older) --Jennifer Hubert

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This Full House

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LaVaughn has made it through the projects, she’s gotten over heartbreak, she’s grown up, and now she might finally have her ticket to college. She believes that she’s keeping alert to all possibilities. But discoveries she makes during her senior year in high school disturb everything in her small universe. And in an effort to bring together people who should love each other, she jeopardizes the one prize she has sought her whole life long.

When do you know whether you’re doing the right thing? What happens when you can’t find a way to make lemonade out of lemons?

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Bat 6

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Told in 21 voices, this narrative uses a sixth-grade girls' baseball game in 1949 Oregon as a vehicle for examining prejudice and the internment of Japanese-Americans during WWII. Ages 10-14.

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The Mozart Season

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I Believe in Water: Twelve Brushes with Religion

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Sometimes funny, sometimes startling - and featuring a variety of settings, cultures, and beliefs - these twelve original stories evoke dilemmas of faith and identity that are familiar to us all. The anthology brings together a powerful mix of award-winning contributors: Jennifer Armstrong, Margaret Peterson Haddix, M. E. Kerr, Gregory Maguire, Kyoko Mori, Jess Mowry, Naomi Shihab Nye, Marilyn Singer, Nancy Springer, Joyce Carol Thomas, Virginia Euwer Wolff, and Jacqueline Woodson.

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In these "twelve brushes with religion" written by leading young-adult authors, teens from a wide range of beliefs search for answers to the hard questions of faith at crucial points in their lives. Braving the long-held taboo in teen fiction against spiritual inquiry, I Believe in Water approaches God from surprising angles. Virginia Euwer Wolff shows us three different girls confronting unwanted pregnancies, praying in the contexts of Christianity, Buddhism, and Islam. Jacqueline Woodson shares a glimpse of her own childhood as a Jehovah's Witness, while Joyce Carol Thomas takes us into the shivery practice of religious snake handling. Gregory Maguire contributes an affecting story about a boy's return to Catholicism, while Jennifer Armstrong plays sainthood for laughs. Marilyn Singer finds answers on the edges of Judaism. In Kyoko Mori's fine story, a young Japanese woman surrenders her life to fate, and, in what is perhaps the most exotic piece in the book, Jess Mowry weaves a tale about a chubby voodoo child-deity. Other very different stories by M.E. Kerr, Naomi Shihab Nye, Nancy Springer, and Margaret Peterson Haddix make this an audacious, unforgettable collection that will reach out to teens pondering spiritual realities in their own lives. For another excellent selection of short stories that address teens and religion, don't miss Sandy Asher's With All My Heart, with All My Mind: Thirteen Stories About Growing Up Jewish. (Ages 12 and older) --Patty Campbell

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