Module 9: True Believer

Module 9

True Believer by Virginia Euwer Wolff

Summary

This novel in verse is the second book in a series about a teen girl named LaVaughn. She lives with her single mother in an apartment in the bad part of town, but LaVaughn is smart and works hard. She wants to go to college and she knows it takes hard work to get there. She is fifteen and she is seeing things in her life change as she is growing up. Her two best friends since childhood are growing apart from her as she is taking advanced classes without them and they spend their time on other interests. A boy she knew years ago moves back into her building and LaVaughn grows interested in him, and they become friends, they even go to a dance together but she can’t tell if he likes her like she likes him.

Citation

Wolff, V.E. (2001). True Believer. New York, NY: Simon & Shuster.

My impressions

This book was a printz honor book in 2002. It is beautifully simple and very complex at the same time. The verse is simple and easy to read, but there are so many elements going on underneath the surface of the story. This book will appeal to female students because of the romantic aspects and it is a great book to show the appeal of the novel in verse and for teens to see how kids who may live very different lives than they do have a lot of the same concerns, about being left out of friend groups, worried about grades and trying to figure out if a boy likes you. I appreciated that there were adult characters in the book who loved and supported LaVaughn. So often in YA books the main character has no adult support. I really liked that this book didn’t fall into the stereotype of the kid from the ghetto figuring life out on her own. The poetry is beautiful and several lines stick with you long after you finish the book. It is the second book in a series, but it stands up fine on its own.

Review from Kirkus Reviews

When Wolff writes a book, it’s an event. When she revisits LaVaughn, as she does in True Believer, it is a prodigious gift. This book stands alone, but includes a cameo appearance by the hapless Jolly (Make Lemonade, 1993). In the course of LaVaughn's seismic 15th year, she grapples with all the big questions of teen life: the drifting away of lifelong friends, setting life goals, falling in love with the wrong man, making sense of sexuality and abstinence, and questioning the existence of God. Or, as LaVaughn puts it, "My life is so swollen with things . . ." With wisdom, snap, and a touch of profound sadness, LaVaughn confronts her best friends' slipping away to "be all the property of Jesus," the deeply wounding discovery that the boy she loves is gay, and the acknowledgment of her own character flaws. She is accused of being "uppity" for her academic achievement, her refusal to join the "Cross your Legs for Jesus Club" and her disdain of a brilliant, shabby lab partner. With every aspect of her life in tatters, LaVaughn confides in her scrappy mother (also an uppity woman) and begins to "rise to the occasion which is life," bringing together the rich cast of characters who inhabit her world at a sweet-16 party. The urban setting, in which six children in LaVaughn's fourth-grade class have died violently, is effectively but unsensationally sketched. In economical blank verse of graceful simplicity, Wolff unerringly reveals the inner depths of her heroine. While LaVaughn feels isolated in her confusion about life, she is surrounded by adults (including demanding, mentoring teachers) who will not allow her to fail. This is a coming-of-age story with both bite and heart, which poses more questions than it answers but never runs out of hope. (Fiction. 12-16)

(2001). [Review of the book True believer by V.E. Wolff].  Kirkus Reviews. Retrieved from https://www.kirkusreviews.com/book-reviews/virginia-euwer-wolff/true-believer/

Idea for use in the library: In February you could do a ‘crush on a book’ challenge, where students were challenged to read a book from a collection of books that involved a character with an obsessive crush on someone.