An award-winning novel about growing up and making choices Virginia Euwer Wolff's groundbreaking novel, written in free verse, tells the story of fourteen-year-old LaVaughn, who is determined to go to college—she just needs the money to get there. When she answers a babysitting ad, LaVaughn meets Jolly, a seventeen-year-old single mother with two kids by different fathers. As she helps Jolly make lemonade out of the lemons her life has given her, LaVaughn learns some lessons outside the classroom.

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?

Each discovery disturbs the arrangements of the known world, and it is our job to stay alert to all possibilities. LaVaughn believes she is keeping alert to all possibilities. She has made it through the projects, she's gotten over heartbreak, she's grown up, and now she's been admitted to the Women in Science program that might finally be her ticket to COLLEGE. But the discoveries she makes during her senior year in high school—two girls pregnant, with very few options—disturb everything in her known world. 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? Virginia Euwer Wolff takes on the biggest questions—about life and love, certainly, but also about girls and women, sacrifice and compassion—and has something quite rev-elatory to say about them in this full house.