Review Of Make Lemonade By Virginia Euwer Wolff

Make Lemonade by Virginia Euwer Wolff is about a fourteen year old girl named Verna LaVaughn. She lives with her mom in an old apartment building after her father accidentally got shot by a member of a gang. Her dream, ever since fifth grade, is to go to college, something neither her mom, nor anyone in her building got to experience. Her mom always reminds her about college, making sure that LaVaughn, as Verna is mostly referred to in the book, knows that she doesn't have any money to pay for her to go into college, and that she has to work for it. LaVaughn sees a babysitting job open on her school bulletin board. She calls the number and soon goes to the apartment building where the babysitting job is. What she finds there is an old, stinky

First, both protagonists are female. Verna LaVaughn is a fourteen year old girl that dreams of going to college so she can get out of her old apartment building and poor neighborhood. Liesel Meminger is about ten years old when her mom, a communist, leaves her with Foster parents so she can escape Germany right before World War II. Secondly, both main characters end up helping someone who is a taboo in society. LaVaughn is baby-sitting for a seventeen year old mother of two. Jolly states that when people in the building see her, they think that she is not a capable parent. LaVaughn helps her when no one would, when everyone was taking advantage of her or criticizing her for getting into this position. LaVaughn tells her to go back to school, which eventually helps Jolly, who was taking a CPR class, save Jilly's life when Jilly starts to choke. Without LaVaughn, Jolly could have lost her baby girl. Liesel and her foster family hid Max, a Jewish man, during pre-World War II times in Germany, a major offense if caught. Liesel and Max bond through their love of books. When Max becomes very sick, Liesel reads to him at any given moment. When Max was better, her wrote Leisel a