This Full House (2009)

I've been waiting for quite a while for the third book in the Make Lemonade trilogy by Virginia Euwer Wolff and I was not disappointed. When I put a mylar cover on the dust cover I discovered a surprise about the art which is not apparent in the face-on view you see here. When the cover is completely open it is apparent that both girls are pregnant!
Anyway, LaVaughn is still attending school, pushed and supported by her single mother, and babysitting Jolly's two darling children, Jilly and Jeremy. Jolly is a very young single mother trying to make a good life for her children by getting her GED.
LaVaughn is now a senior in high school and the goal of attending college is so close she can almost taste it. She is accepted into a program called WIMS.

"Every girl here is from a poor school
and this doctor walks in
as if we're the best roomful of students ever.
She puts the binder on the lecture stand
and smiles at every one of us,
a startling smile,
I can feel it like a beam
when it comes to me and moves along.
'WIMS.
Women in Medical Science.
These four words can connect you
with the rest of your lives, girls.' Her voice.
Like a deep bell, promise, expectation.
She looks across the whole room and back again.
'Note that this is not a large group.
Fourty-five, to be exact.
You are preparing to give your lives to medicine.
And what is medicine,
what do we devote ourselves to here?
Preservation of life,
restitution of health. That is our mission.'
The lump in my throat comes and goes.
I think it is because
I might fail this thing."

So speaks Dr. Moore, a dedicated neurosurgeon who has organized a medical school primer for high school girls to entice them and give them a boost into the field of medicine. LaVaughn is riveted to every word but something starts to creep into her mind, something about the doctor that reminds her of someone, mannerisms that she has seen before. Could she be Jolly's mother? To add to her many fields of focus, one of her best friends is pregnant.
Wolff has given us another novel in verse about her protaganist who has her goal in reach and still has time for her friends and mother. I have no doubt that LaVaughn will continue through college and achieve a position in the medical field. I would love to be at her graduation.
My rating for this book: +++++