Mavis Jukes is an American

United States

The United States of America is a federal constitutional republic comprising fifty states and a federal district...

 author

Author

An author is broadly defined as "the person who originates or gives existence to anything" and that authorship determines responsibility for what is created. Narrowly defined, an author is the originator of any written work.-Legal significance:...

 of novels for children

Children's literature

Children's literature is for readers and listeners up to about age twelve; it is often defined in four different ways: books written by children, books written for children, books chosen by children, or books chosen for children. It is often illustrated. The term is used in senses which sometimes...

. She has also published nonfiction books for children and pre-teens about puberty

Puberty

Puberty is the process of physical changes by which a child's body matures into an adult body capable of reproduction, as initiated by hormonal signals from the brain to the gonads; the ovaries in a girl, the testes in a boy...

. 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

Robert H. Hudson

Robert Hudson is an American artist who was born in Salt Lake City, Utah and grew up in Richland, Washington. He received a B.F.A in 1961 and an M.F.A. in 1963, both from the San Francisco Art Institute....

, 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

Methotrexate

Methotrexate , abbreviated MTX and formerly known as amethopterin, is an antimetabolite and antifolate drug. It is used in treatment of cancer, autoimmune diseases, ectopic pregnancy, and for the induction of medical abortions. It acts by inhibiting the metabolism of folic acid. Methotrexate...

 as a new cancer therapy and was one of the first to formulate the neutral theory of molecular evolution

Neutral theory of molecular evolution

The neutral theory of molecular evolution states that the vast majority of evolutionary changes at the molecular level are caused by random drift of selectively neutral mutants . The theory was introduced by Motoo Kimura in the late 1960s and early 1970s...

.

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

Fiction

• No One Is Going to Nashville (1983)
• Lights Around the Palm (1987)
• Getting Even (1988)
• Wild Iris Bloom (1993)
• I'll See You in My Dreams (1993)
• Losers Weepers (1997)
• Expecting the Unexpected (1999)
• Planning the Impossible (1999)
• Cinderella 2000 (2001)
• Blackberries in the Dark (2002)
• You're a Bear (2003)
• Like Jake and Me (2005)
• Smoke (2009)

Nonfiction

• Ladies' Business (1995)
• It's A Girl Thing (1996)
• Growing Up (1998)
• The Guy Book (2004)
• Be Healthy! It's A Girl Thing with Lillian Wai-Yin Cheung (2003)