Sixteen-year-old Hope was raised by her aunt.  Hope is used to moving often and writes the message “Hope was here” at each place she must leave just before she goes, a quiet little statement of graffiti self assertion.  Aunt Addie works as a waitress.  Addie starts a new job as a waitress and cook for Welcome Stairways Diner in rural Wisconsin, where the owner, G. T. Stoop, has just entered the local mayoral race.  Hope volunteers to help with G. T.‘s campaign.  They discover that the current mayor is taking bribes. Can a handful of honest people really make a difference in a corrupt government?  Will Hope need to write her little epitaph once again, and move on one more time?  (Jean Bellavance bellavance@erols.com for Pennsylvania Young Reader's Choice Awards, 2003)

Booktalk #2

What’s in a name?  Perhaps not a whole bunch to a lot of people.   It means a lot to Hope Yancey, who legally changed her name to Hope when she was twelve.  At fourteen she was a waitress, like the mother who left her to be raised by her Aunt Addie.  Addie is a great cook but because of her jobs they move around constantly, most recently from Brooklyn to Mulhoney, Wisconsin.   There they live above the Welcome Stairways diner, across the hall from its proprietor, G.T. Stoop, who is fighting leukemia and a shady mayor, simultaneously.
                        What’s in a place?  Where you live may not mean much to a lot of people; but if you are sixteen-year-old Hope Yancey, you hate leaving the places that you love, even if you consider yourself to be pretty adaptable.  As Hope begins to bond with the diner staff and customers at Welcome Stairways she wonders if this will be just another stop along the road.  She tries hard to live up to all the meanings that Roget’s thesaurus gives her name; and she finds herself alternately needing and giving hope.  Read Hope Was Here, by Joan Bauer. 
                    “But when you’re in food service, you understand that sometimes you’re making up for people in your customers’ lives who haven’t been too nice.  A lonely old woman at the counter just lights up when I smile at her; a tired mother with a screaming baby squeezes my hand when I clean up the mess her other child spilled.
                    You know what I like most about waitressing?  When I’m doing it, I’m not thinking that much about myself.  I’m thinking about other people.  I’m learning again and again what it takes to make a difference in people’s lives.”  (Gail King, grking@bellsouth.net, USC - CLIS)