Planning the Impossible

by Mavis Jukes

Ugh! Mrs. Furley wanted the Human Interaction Class to discuss a boy's changes? Twelve-year-old River was having a hard enough time just figuring out how to humanly interact with the real people in her life. Like, she was happy that D.B. was her sort-of boyfriend, but now Kirstin was always flirting with him! And River was happy her friend Margaret had found a boyfriend, but then Noah passed River a note asking her to phone him at home. What was that about? Sure River wanted to keep Kirstin from D.B. and Margaret with Noah, but did it all have to be so confusing?

Notes passed from girls to boys and boys to girls and girls to girls, dating and mating, flirting and posing--River could never have guessed that talking to a boy would be so difficult.

176 pages, Paperback

First published April 13, 1999

About the author

Mavis Jukes (born May 3, 1947 in Nyack, New York), is an American author of novels for children. She has also published nonfiction books for children and pre-teens about puberty. Her books are usually health-based.

Before becoming an author, Jukes was a lawyer and a teacher. Her first book, No One is Going to Nashville, was published in 1983. She lives with her husband, the sculptor and painter Robert H. Hudson, and their daughters in Sonoma County, California. She is the daughter of Thomas Hughes Jukes, a famous molecular biologist and nutritionist, who pioneered the use of methotrexate as a new cancer therapy and was one of the first to formulate the neutral theory of molecular evolution.

She received the Newbery Honor distinction in 1985 for her book Like Jake and Me.