Virginia Euwer Wolff

High-school-senior LaVaughn's perceptions and expectations of her life begin to change as she learns about the many unexpected connections between the people she loves best.

Viginia 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.

In small town, post-World War Oregon, twenty-one sixth-grade girls recount the story of an annual softball game, during which one girl's bigotry comes to the surface. Set in a small Oregon town just after World War II, this is the powerful tale of a community shattered by its reaction to two young newcomers, Aki and Shazam. Told from 21 different points of view, "Bat 6" explores the subject of Japanese-American racial prejudice after the war. Photographs and text present an up-close look at varied aspects of the lives of professional basketball players, from pre-game preparations, practice, game action, signing autographs, and more. A Japanese American girl who has just spent 6 years in an internment camp meets a bitter girl whose father was killed in Pearl Harbor, & the two become rivals in baseball in this story narrated by the members of the opposing teams.

Allegra spends her twelfth summer practicing a Mozart concerto for a violin competition and finding many significant connections in her world. Allegra Shapiro was planning on taking it easy this summer, but then she found out that she had made it to the finals of a prestigious competition for young musicians. Now she's got to concentrate on playing Mozart's Fourth Violin Concerto. Her way. Better than anyone else. But it's hard for Allegra to stay focused when there's so much on her mind. She wants to understand the pain of an eccentric, talented singer. She needs to help a mysterious man find his lost song. She has to come to terms with a tragic event in her family's history. Who says music can take your cares away?.

Nick, a learning disabled sixteen-year-old, copes with his anger and hurt at being labeled a Special Education student while also dealing with dating and the troubling memories of his drowned sister.