New Releases by Virginia Euwer Wolff

"Extraordinarily artful." -- Booklist The sixth-grade girls of Barlow and Bear Creek Ridge have been waiting to play in the annual softball game -- the Bat 6 -- for as long as they can remember.But something is different this year. There''s a new girl on both teams, each with a secret in her past that puts them on a collision course set to explode on game day. No one knows how to stop it. All they can do is watch...

LaVaughn has made it through the projects, she’s gotten over 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?

In order to earn money for college, fourteen-year-old LaVaughn babysits for a teenage mother.

Nick Swansen pretty much knows what it means to be Special Ed.: You can''t drive, even if you''re sixteen and your parents have two cars; the regular kids in school don''t talk to you much; and even if you can memorize every fact about amphibians, it''s hard to make sense of all the other stuff swirling in your mind. What he doesn''t know is whether being Special Ed. means you shouldn''t go to the prom. But since no rule says you can''t, Nick decides to ask Shana. But the prom doesn''t turn out at all the way Nick expects it to, and everything bad seems to get all mixed up together: the prom, what Shana does, and the terrible thing that happened to Nick''s sister nine years ago. Nick doesn''t want to think about any of it, but he begins to realize that unless he makes peace with all the memories that trouble him, they will haunt him forever....

In small town, post-World War Oregon, twenty-one 6th grade girls recount the story of an annual softball game, during which one girl''s bigotry comes to the surface.

Die Geschichte von La Vaughn aus dem viel gelobten Buch ''Wenn dir das Leben eine Zitrone gibt, mach Limonade draus'' geht weiter - Inzwischen ist La Vaughn fünfzehn Jahre alt und hat die Chance aufs College zu gehen. Aber so einfach ist das gar nicht, sich aufs Arbeiten zu konzentrieren, wo das Erwachsenwerden so viel Kraft kostet Am meisten beschäftigt La Vaughn, dass die Beziehung zu ihren besten Freundinnen zu zerbrechen droht. Myrtle und Annie rennen wie wild in eine Kirchengemeinschaft und alles andere ist ihnen nicht mehr wichtig. Wie kann sie sich selbst treu bleiben und den beiden trotzdem nahe sein? Und plötzlich ist Jody wieder da, ihr Freund aus Kindertagen und sieht zum Verlieben gut aus. Dann muss sie auch noch die schreckliche Erfahrung machen, dass Jody keine Freundin haben will. Auch an anderen Fronten eckt La Vaughn an - bei Patrick zum Beispiel, ihrem Laborpartner, über dessen tollpatschige Annäherungsversuche sie sich lustig macht, und bei ihrer Mom, die plötzlich einen neuen Mann anschleppt und überlegt, mit ihm wegzuziehen.

In this second novel of Wolff''s "Make Lemonade" trilogy, 15-year old Verna LaVaughn is visited by Jody, a boy she knew as a child who comes back to the housing project where she lives. Jody behaves as if he''s in love with her, but Jody is wrestling with questions of his own identity.