Another Book From Module 9 Poetry/Short Stories

Module 9 Poetry/Short Stories

All The Broken Pieces

By Ann Burg

Image Found Here

Bibliography: 

 Burg, A. E. (2009). All the broken pieces: a novel in verse. New York: Scholastic Press.

Summary:

 This is a moving story about a young 10 year old boy from View Nam during the Viet Nam War. It is a narrative written in verse about being taken from his mother and brother to America where he is adopted by a family. It sheds light on what veterans face when returning from war and a fresh perspective from a Vietnamese child. He faces troubles being accepted to a new school, country and being of the race with which our country was in a war with.  

Impressions: 

 I highly recommend this book. It talks about tolerance and moving past prejudices and working together to heal and help make each other better. The story unfolds within the setting of America's favorite past time, baseball.

Reviews:

KIRKUS REVIEW

Matt Pin’s story, told in first-person verse, opens with the evacuation of refugees near the end of the Vietnam War. Afterward Matt, an Amerasian, is adopted by a loving American family. Two years later, he remains haunted by a past in which his soldier father abandoned him, his mother gave him up and his brother was maimed before his eyes. He suffers deeply from prejudice when he tries out for the school baseball team and from his misunderstanding of both his biological and adoptive families’ motives. Through the efforts of two veterans, Matt begins to understand that his mother gave him away because she loved him, not because he was culpable in the crippling of his brother. In recognizing the analogous suffering endured by others touched by the war, Matt begins to resolve the conflicts of his spirit. Graceful symmetries between brother and brother, father and son, past and present, guilt and forgiveness shed light on the era and the individual. The verse form carries highly charged emotions and heavy content with elegiac simplicity. A memorable debut. (Historical fiction. 10-14) 

ALL THE BROKEN PIECES by Ann E. Burg. (2009). Kirkus Reviews. Retrieved August 9, 2014, 

       from https://www.kirkusreviews.com/book-reviews/ann-e-burg/all-the-broken-pieces/ 

Suggestions for Use:

 This book would be great to introduce when talking about bullying and discrimination. The example in the book of how the baseball coach forced Matt and the bully to reconcile and work together was a great activity that could be used.