MAKE LEMONADE

How can a 14-year-old babysitter make up for the parents, the husband, the whole support system that 17-year-old single mother Jolly needs--and doesn't have? LaVaughn is every bit as determined to help the struggling ghetto family she babysits for as she is to save money for college. This is the first in Euwer Wolf's LaVaughn trilogy. Her second, TRUE BELIEVER, won Newbery honors this year. LaVaughn is a girl worth following, a girl whose observations are full of humor and honesty. Narrator Heather Alicia Simms captures the ghetto cadences that put listeners right in the middle of Jolly's cockroach-infested living room. When Simms draws out LaVaughn's name to emphasize Jolly's anger, it's like overhearing girls talking on a corner--very real and in the moment. M.C. (c) AudioFile 2002, Portland, Maine [Published: JUN/JUL 02]