Mission Impossible — Beth Goobie

Nominee, Governor General's Literary Award for Children's Literature - Text

Jill Gilbert doesn't like the high school Lovely Legs Contest. For one thing, it's sponsored by the football team headed by her brother. For another, the school newspaper she writes for came up with the idea. But more important, it boils her blood that guys like her brother make so many assumptions about what girls like.

So why does she end up entering the competition? Maybe for the same reason she tried out for the football team. Maybe for the same reason she's obsessed with the movie The Mission. Jill is nobody's pushover.

Mission Impossible is a tough sensitive teen novel. Jill, the narrator, is wickedly funny and heartbreakingly honest as she wrestles with sexism in her school and demons in her head. She comes close to going over the edge in more ways than one but triumphs in a way she could never have predicted. Right now, though, she's stuck in a jungle of tangled thoughts and leg hairs on what seems like an impossible mission.