An oldie but goodie, Make Lemonade, by National Book Award winning author Virginia Euwer Wolff, is a realistic fiction children’s book about making sweet “lemonade” with bitter lemons. The novel is the winner of a Bulletin of the Center for Children’s Book Blue Ribbon and named a 1993 School Library Journal Best Book.

Written in  free verse, Wolff poetically shares LaVaughn and Jolly’s stories. LaVaughn, a fourteen year old college bound young lady, looking to raise funds for school, replies to a babysitting job posting by seventeen year old single mom, Jolly. Jolly is struggling to make ends meet raising her two children alone in a dirty apartment where “even the roaches are driven up the wall.”  As the story progress we see two seemigly very different teens grow beautufully. 

Virginia Euwer Wolff shows restraint as she tells the young ladies' stories without judgement. Jolly and LaVaughn are not only great characters but believable, a literary element important in realistic fiction. Friendship, abuse, support and self love are just a few of the themes Wolff touches in this encouraging work.