All the Broken Pieces

All the Broken Pieces by Ann E. Burg

Lately, I seem to have a baseball as therapy theme. Matt lives with his mother and father and younger brother Tommy.  He goes out for the baseball team.  He is desperate to please his family.  It’s not his first family.  He was airlifted out of Vietnam, handed by his mother to soldiers, told “you can’t stay here.”  Matt struggles to reconcile his intense feels of loss and betrayal resulting from being given up by his mother, abandoned by his father and having to leave his brother behind with his terror that his current life will also somehow dissolve.  This is more than a book about baseball, it’s a book about war, adoption, loss and grief.  Written in verse, it’s a quick read with lots to discuss, and may make a good classroom read for middle school and high school.

I am far from an expert on how books about adoption should read.   Disclaimer aside, I liked how the author did not shy away from the trauma and loss aspect of adoption.  Matt’s family makes an effort to involve him with the cultural traditions of Vietnam as well as deal with the issues he has from being there during the war.  They commit to helping him try to find his family in Vietnam.  It’s clear his family feels that there is enough love to go around for both families.  The part that made me the most uncomfortable is when a Vietnam vet uses Matt as an example of the good that they did in Vietnam.  I couldn’t help but think, yeah, well, they wouldn’t need rescuing if you hadn’t been destroying their country.  But it is a good topic for discussion, especially about perspective and motivations: “Why do the vets need to believe that they saved children?”

Sex, Nudity, Dating – A Vietnamese woman and a soldier have a child, she “called him husband”  An adult character’s wife left him.
Profanity – None.
Death, Violence and Gore – There are frequent and graphic descriptions of the Vietnam war.  This book is likely to be disturbing to some.  A child is badly injured by a land mine, losing his legs and fingers.  There are descriptions of burnt flesh, crying children, flames, screams, guns, withered hands, death in the trenches, using children to carry explosives, wiping blood from a torn up face.  This type of description is found throughout the book.
Drugs, Alcohol and Smoking – Dad grabs a beer.
Frightening or Intense Things – An adult character has cancer.  The war descriptions and descriptions of Vietnam veterans are quite intense.  Finally, there is clearly trauma involved in Matt’s adoption.