806

January 1, 2018
With a theatrical flair for comedy and drama, songwriter Weil (I’m Glad I Did) offers an improbable but hilarious road trip story about three St. Louis teens seeking out their shared sperm-donor father. When the three meet in person, rock-band guitarist Katie “KT” Lambert, who narrates, is disappointed to learn that she’s related to two of her least appealing classmates: “dumb jock” Jesse and “bookwormy nerd” Gabe. Nonetheless, she agrees to join them on a spur-of-the-moment trip west to find their father. Thus begins a series of misadventures and mixed-up identities that has the threesome traveling on highways and back roads to a tattoo artist’s mountaintop retreat, a celebrity golf tournament, and a rock star’s mansion. Fortune and misfortune are painted with broad, colorful strokes, and readers will enjoy predicting how the outrageous adventure will end. Although the protagonists appear stereotypical at first, their family backgrounds and other problems add depth to their characterizations. Besides learning to accept their differences, KT, Jesse, and Gabe come to appreciate what they have left behind. Ages 13–up.

December 15, 2017
Three St. Louis teens, half siblings conceived by donor insemination, embark on a summer road trip in 2008 to find their shared biological father.Trying to track down her biological father, budding musician and songwriter KT learns she owes her existence not to her mother's ex-husband, who left before KT's birth, but to donor 806, selected on the basis of his Cryosperm profile (Harvard degree), who's elected to remain anonymous. Using a donor-sibling registry, KT locates two half brothers among her classmates: Gabe, a nerdy amateur magician with allergies, and Jesse, a handsome, popular athlete. Gabe recently learned of his DI conception. Jesse was told early. With his lesbian moms splitting up, Jesse hopes his bio dad might offer new options. After a setback, the three head out on a wild quest featuring lucky, if unlikely, coincidences, including clerical and spelling errors. Settings include the sperm bank, a car wash/brothel, a seedy casino, and a celebrity golf tournament to aid people with color blindness. Like a TV sitcom, the plot relies on titillating sexual innuendo (DI mechanics are played for laughs) and exaggerated characterization. Cliches and cultural stereotypes abound. The white teens' discovery that 806 is African-American, to everyone's dismay, is wince-inducing. The satire of celebrity vanity and self-absorption is funny (the author's an accomplished lyricist, a Rock and Roll Hall of Fame inductee) but tangential to the plot.Risque adult fare in teen drag. (Fiction. 14-18)

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February 1, 2018
Grades 9-12 In a dizzying swing of revelations, KT learns that she was conceived with the help of an anonymous sperm donor, identified only by the number 806. Within weeks, KT has met two half-siblings with the same donor father, and they embark on a road trip to track down their bio dad. Improbable? Definitely. But realism isn't the objective in this fast-paced, humorous novel by renowned songwriter Weil. The three half-siblings begin as stereotypes: KT is a cynical musician; Jesse is a handsome jock; and Gabe is a nerd allergic to everything. As they travel cross-country from St. Louis to Los Angeles in a dilapidated, borrowed Jeep, they make brief acquaintance with an assortment of two-dimensional characters and navigate their way out of implausible perils, all the while forging an unexpected bond of familial affection. The whole adventure is inexplicably set in 2008, which is not quite historical but not quite contemporary for today's teens. Still, it explores the real issues confronting children of sperm donors, albeit not as believably as Natasha Friend's The Other F Word (2017).(Reprinted with permission of Booklist, copyright 2018, American Library Association.)