This Full House

by Virginia Euwer Wolff

Overview

LaVaughn has made it through the projects, she’s gottenover heartbreak, she’s grown up, and now she might finally have her ticket to college. She believes that she’s keeping alert to all possibilities. But discoveries she makes during her senior year in high school disturb everything in her small universe. 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?

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9780061583063
Publisher:	HarperCollins Publishers
Publication date:	05/17/2011
Series:	Make Lemonade Trilogy (Paperback)
Pages:	496
Sales rank:	1,019,550
Product dimensions:	5.31(w) x 8.00(h) x 1.12(d)
Lexile:	940L (what's this?)
Age Range:	14 - 17 Years

About the Author

Virginia Euwer Wolff is the distinguished author of six books for young readers. Her books have won the National Book Award, the Michael L. Printz Honor, the Golden Kite Award, the International Reading Association Children's Book Award, the Jane Addams Book Award, the PEN-West Book Award, and the Oregon Book Award, among many other honors. Critics have called make lemonade and true believer, the previous two books in this trilogy, "triumphant" (School Library Journal), "transcendent" (ALA Booklist), and "groundbreaking" (Publishers Weekly). Virginia Euwer Wolff lives and works in Oregon City, Oregon.

Editorial Reviews

PRAISE FOR THIS FULL HOUSE: “An audacious and rewarding finale in the unparalleled MAKE LEMONADE sequence, there’s room in THIS FULL HOUSE for any reader to find a home.”—New York Times bestselling author Gregory Maguire “Once again, Virginia Euwer Wolff manages to write with such intensity, leading to such grace. This trilogy is a masterpiece, and this book is full of hard-earned beauty. Consider me amazed.”—New York Times bestselling author David Levithan “LaVaughn’s desire to make a difference in the lives of her friends is the strong voice that carries this story . . . an exploration on how easy it is to love yet how difficult it can be to forgive. A fitting and optimistic end to the trilogy.”—VOYA “A memorable tale of family, friendship, conscience and tenacity.”—BookPage “Wolff’s lyrical free verse once again breathes life into her unforgettable heroine.”—The Horn Book “LaVaughn’s ferocious determination and intelligence will wholly captivate readers, as will her beautifully articulated, elemental questions about integrity, faith, and how best to build a life.”—ALA Booklist “I couldn’t wait to find out what happened, and then wanted to go right on reading about these thoughtful, quirky, splendid characters. LaVaughn —so wise, naïve, and purely honest—is a treasure.”—Joanna Rudge Long, children’s literature scholar emeritus “The long-awaited conclusion to the trilogy delivers on its promise.” — Kirkus Reviews (starred review)

“An inspiring, relatable tale of perseverance, forgiveness, and family.”— — School Library Journal

From the Publisher

Fans of Make Lemonade and True Believer have been eager for the final episode of this verse trilogy, to see where Wolff takes her protagonist, LaVaughn. For a while it seems as if LaVaughn's good heart and tenacity have been cleanly rewarded: she wins a spot in a highly selective program for underprivileged girls planning on careers in medical science. Although focused on her future, she remains acutely aware of others' struggles: her friend Annie gets pregnant; she learns that Jolly, the single mother whose children she babysits, was abandoned in infancy; and she regrets spurning brilliant Patrick ("And I never found out if he forgave me/ for being mean and childish and not noticing I was"). Even Dr. Moore, the inspiring woman who founded the medical science program, turns out to have a blistering secret in her past. Struggling to "act according to your conscience/ even when you don't want to," LaVaughn finds herself in murky ethical waters when Wolff contrives a very big coincidence for her to address. The steady, sympathetic characterizations more than compensate for the unlikely plot twist, however, and the trilogy closes warmly, sagely and, yes, even triumphantly. Ages 14-up. (Jan.)

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Publishers Weekly

Gr 8 Up

The third verse novel finds narrator LaVaughn in her senior year of high school. She is still determined to have a career in the sciences, despite the fact that her underfunded public school has run-down lab equipment, the teens in her neighborhood never consider higher education, and her subtle but persistent belief that those who succeed are somehow fundamentally better than she is. Characters from the previous books are reintroduced. Jolly, the young mother for whom LaVaughn has become a babysitter and near kin, is working on her GED and dating a man who seems willing to stick around. Annie, LaVaughn's hyperreligious childhood friend, has become pregnant by her hypocritical youth group leader. Awkward Patrick, with whom LaVaughn studied science during the summer, earns her jealousy by attending a new school with access to the university's state-of-the-art facilities. LaVaughn also faces a new challenge when she is accepted into Women in Medical Science, a local hospital's rigorous after-school enrichment program for underprivileged girls. Wolff's language is rich and poetic, using scientific words like "tibia" and "deoxyriboneucleic acid" to both intellectual and aesthetic effect. LaVaughn's emotions, from fear to joy to disbelief, are palpable and realistic. The story falters a bit when a major plot contrivance strains credibility and diminishes what is otherwise an inspiring, relatable tale of perseverance, forgiveness, and family.-Megan Honig, New York Public Library

School Library Journal

The long-awaited conclusion to the trilogy begun with 1993's Make Lemonade delivers on its promise. More than a year has passed since the events of True Believer (2001), and two summers of Summer Science have taught LaVaughn more than she ever could have learned at her underfunded inner-city school. Now she's studying after school at WIMS: Women in Medical Science, a program created by Dr. Moore, an inner-city success story who's returned to give poor girls the support she never had. LaVaughn works hard at WIMS, dreaming of one day becoming a nurse. But though LaVaughn is indebted to the program, she has suspicions about Dr. Moore's history, suspicions that lead her into the conflict between what's right and what's necessary. In heartbreaking free-verse chapters, LaVaughn discovers that helpful adults are not perfect and that forgiveness is necessary even for the unforgivable. Despite the book's oversimplification of religion and a conclusion that would seem pat if it were not so emotionally right, this portrayal of the dignity of poverty is quite the tearjerker. The audacity of hope, indeed. (Fiction. 13-15)

Kirkus Reviews