Reform school girls try to make the best of a bad situation.

Behind the locked gates and barbed-wire fences of a Los Angeles-area reformatory for wayward girls and unwed mothers, the inmates conceal a newborn baby boy from the institution's housemother and caretaker guards two weeks before Christmas to keep them from sending him to an adoption agency. They steal linens and bedsheets to make diapers, take shifts to care for the baby, and make Christmas presents from odds and ends and personal items to give little "Buddy" the Christmas none of them have ever had.—Les Adams <[email protected]>

The Martha Washington School for Girls is a Los Angeles-area reformatory. Mrs. Nichols, its matron who has worked in the business for 23 years, has total disdain for the girls. She considers the "inmates" are a bunch of irredeemable liars and the only ways to deal effectively with them are discipline and a zero-tolerance policy. The girls have an equal disdain for the administration but they manage to survive in this environment by supporting each other. One of them, "Green Eyes," will be realized in another month, at Christmas, and plans to run off with her boyfriend Cliff Munster, himself just released from prison, and live a decent life. Two new people arrive at Martha Washington on the same day: new inmate Betsy Abel and new housemother Margaret Wilson. Betsy has come straight from the institution for unwed pregnant teens, her two-month-old son is in her own mother's custody. Margaret, also called Peggy and Maggie, believes that the girls *are* redeemable and need a loving, understanding environment to flourish into young women ready for the outside world.—Huggo