My So-Called Family (review)

Abstract

Reviewed by: My So-Called Family Deborah Stevenson Sheinmel, Courtney; My So-Called Family. Simon, 2008; [208p] ISBN 978-1-4169-5785-0 $15.99 Reviewed from galleys Ad Gr. 5–8 “He’s off in Europe somewhere” is what Leah says whenever anybody asks about her father, but in reality, her biological father is an anonymous sperm donor whom she’s never met. Now that she and her family—mother, stepfather, and half-brother—have moved to a new town, Leah’s excited to be hanging with the popular eighth-grade crowd, and she’s determined that her secret won’t get out as it did in her old school. At the same time, her growing independence leads to friction with her family and increasing curiosity about her biological heritage, and she signs up in a registry for donor siblings. She’s thrilled to find biological half-sibling Samantha, who increasingly becomes her phone and email confidante, but can she integrate her newly discovered family with her old one? While the sperm-donor plot is dramatic, contrivance weights it down, with the paternal half-sibs an implausibly happy new family and the melding of the two families at a reunion an unbelievably easy solution. More effective is the broader story of a girl who’s hitting the teens and beginning the rocky road of individuation (“I’m thirteen,” she says to her mother. “I don’t think you’re supposed to know everything about me anymore”), [End Page 96] a task made all the more difficult by the former exclusive closeness of mother and daughter. Franklin’s The Other Half of Me (BCCB 10/07) is more credible in its treatment of donee experience, but this is a blend of soapy and close-to-home that may appeal to middle-schoolers with a taste for family drama. Copyright © 2008 The Board of Trustees of the University of Illinois