Virginia Euwer Wolff: Make Lemonade

Harsh and wonderful book. Too often YA gives you candy-coated suburban kids with one teensy problem that seems like the end of the world. This is about one girl from a difficult background who's absolutely determined to get to college and get out, who gets a job helping another girl not much older who's infinitely worse off. This book made me want to scrub my house and stand up straight and fight for what I want, but at the same time really brought home the helpless despair that some kids are into up to their necks.

If you read the author section at the back, Wolff says the inspiration came from a terrible plastic-upholstered stroller she got for her kids at the Salvation Army but just could not get clean, no matter how much she scrubbed it. Can't you picture that stroller? That nasty plastic that isn't affected by any amount of cleanser and rage?

The two girls and the kids and the mom are brilliantly drawn. I was fascinated throughout by how racially non-specific it was, too. Honestly, I've never seen that done better. When you read the first page, the format might be off-putting momentarily, but it goes invisible right away. That didn't happen with the John Green novel-in-poetry I tried to read. I couldn't get past a few pages and it was all uphill work. This is more like a direct line into LaVaughn's mind.

Wolff's strengths are many but the one I'd pick out if I had to pick one is her focus on the daily minutiae that are so important because they add up. A social studies worksheet? Seems like nothing. But every worksheet adds up to make your grade, which makes your year, which determines what you can do with your life. Every bit of banana that doesn't get wiped up right away adds up--just like every bit that you DO wipe up adds up. I wish we could all learn this forever and never forget. It's too easy to let things slide moment by moment and then find yourself in a disaster. I think that's the very thing that determines your life, right there, what you catch or let go moment to moment.

I put this book down to go to sleep last night, but then couldn't sleep until I got up and finished it.

Add Virginia Euwer Wolff to my small but growing pantheon of gentle, intelligent, insightful authors who actively make me want to stand up and scream and be a better person.