When I grew up, I didn't understand boys at all. Three new books for young adults, tackle the difference between the sexes with candor and humor. For those at the beginning of adolescence, there's Mavis Jukes' funny fictional girl-book Planning the Impossible . For teenagers who have a million questions, but wouldn't be caught dead talking to mom or dad, there's Michael Gurian's Understanding Guys and Jeremy Daldry's The Teenage Guy's Survival Guide .
Curiosity about the opposite sex can make life downright weird. Mavis Jukes understands and knows how to help ten to twelve year olds laugh. Planning the Impossible is her second novel about River. In the first book, Expect the Unexpected, River was worried about periods, pregnancy, and having to attend Gladys Furley's embarrassing coed Human Interaction class. Now Mrs. Furley is back to discuss male adolescence. The dialogue is hysterical as she tries to pry answers from her class about male body parts and athletic supporters. When Mrs. Furley talks about external male productive organs, the disgusted River thinks, "at least girls kept their sex organs pretty much inside their bodies, where they belong." Just as funny is River's class project, a guidebook for parents filled with behaviors that are unacceptable to their children. Meanwhile, River has to deal with her mother's embarrassing pregnancy, a manipulative female classmate, and the confusions of a first crush.
Jeremy Daldry sheds light on relationships in The Teenage Guy's Survival Guide . You know the title means business when you read the table of contents. No subject is too small, or too scary for the author. He offers information about dates, kissing, conquests, dumping, being dumped, shaving, being stinky, wet dreams, failure, depression...and more. The book delivers on the promise with a style that's conversational, informational, graphically playful, honest, humorous and practical.
Michael Gurain's Understanding Guys: A Guide for Girls helps teenage girls trying to puzzle out the opposite sex. Gurain explains how genetic differences that made survival work for thousand of years, now make relationships difficult. He discusses the impact of testosterone, teasing, respect, and handling anger. His writing is full of surprises and sense, interesting studies, anecdotal stories that show his expertise and wisdom, and his suggestions are insightful and useful.
Planning the Impossible , The Teenage Guy's Survival Guide and Understanding Guys deal not just with physiology, but with how it plays out and could really help kids understand the opposite sex. The only tricky thing is getting these books into the hands of those who need them. Teenagers are by nature, oppositional. So don't give them to your teen, just leave them out and let them be discovered.
Planning the Impossible(Delacorte, $14.95; ages 10-13)
Jeremy Daldry's The Teenage Guy's Survival Guide(Little Brown, $8.95; ages 12 and up).
Michael Gurian Understanding Guys: A Guide for Teenage Girls(Price Stern Sloan, $4.99; ages 14 and up)