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Oh my.  This is my type of book.  All the Broken Pieces by Ann Burg and I were made for each other. And had it not been for the Cybils, this middle grade free verse novel might have flown under my radar (despite that I now see the reviews for it – all of which are glowing).  I have yet to meet a free verse novel that I didn’t like.  Combine that with a story that involves the Vietnam war and I can’t resist it.

Two years ago, twelve-year-old Matt, the son of a American soldier and a Vietnamese woman, is airlifted out of his home country of Vietnam and adopted by an American family.  He wakes up often with nightmares, but his adoptive mother and father are there to help sooth him.  They are able to give him the love and attention that he needs.  But he has many adjustments to make and must come to terms with his inner turmoil and guilt from leaving his country, his mother, his little brother, confusion over a father who abandoned them, misunderstanding over his mother who gave him away and apprehension over the love that is now shown to him from a wonderful family.

He was born in the war.  His entire life was the war.

He must also face his schoolmates who associate Matt with the war and their brothers and fathers who never came home.  Matt’s baseball coach and piano teacher both help heal the rift in Matt’s heart and close the divide between two seemingly different lives.   An incredible story of love, healing, and acceptance.

I loved it.  Loved it.

The verse just blew me away.  As I’m sitting here now wondering what passage I should quote, I want to choose every page I look at.

Mom, Celia, Chris, and me,
we used to be good friends . . .
He leaves his sentence
hanging in the air.

Sometimes the words people don’t say
as are powerful as the ones they do.

Until the war came,
I say, finishing his thought.

He nods.

Until the war came
and ruined everything.

Because of you Matt-the-rat,
there’s no place for me.

Because of you, my wife left.

Because of you, my brother died.

Because of you, I have stumps instead of legs.

My head starts to spin.

The kitchen suddenly feels
as small as the storage room
behind the janitor’s closet.

I’d better go finish my homework, Dad,
I say.
Instead,
I run downstairs
to the basement bathroom
and throw up.

And another:

For two years,
I learned about Vietnam,
but it wasn’t any
Vietnam I remembered.
The teacher
was a tiny woman
with small eyes
who always stayed
in one spot
when she talked,
but those words rolled
up and down,
up and down
the classroom walls
like a glass marble.

She told happy stories
of people and places
I did not know.

Colorful costumes
and carnival dragons
live in another Vietnam,
a Vietnam
that I do not remember.

I close my eyes.
I listen.

I try to remember
the colors,

but I cannot.

I try to form
dragons from
dust,

but I cannot.

I try again.
But I cannot.

My Vietnam
is drenched
in smoke and fog.

It has no parks
or playgrounds,
no classrooms
or teachers.

It is not
on any map
or in any book.

My Vietnam is
only
a pocketful
of broken pieces
I carry inside me.

Prose like this always brings such raw emotion to the surface.  Achingly beautiful.

Links of interest: More book blogger reviews.
Genre: Fiction, free verse novel.  Approx ages 9-12.
Publisher: Scholastic.  April 1, 2009.
Hardcover, 224 pages. ISBN 0545080924
Source copy: Library
All the Broken Pieces is available from your favorite independent bookstore, Powell’s, and Amazon.

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