All the Broken Pieces

Starred review from April 13, 2009
Using spare free verse, first-time novelist Burg (Pirate Pickle and the White Balloon
) beautifully evokes the emotions of a Vietnamese adoptee as he struggles to come to terms with his past. Although he loves his American parents and new little brother, Matt misses the family he left behind two years ago, in 1975, when he was airlifted out of Vietnam. He feels guilty for leaving behind his toddler brother, who was mutilated by a bomb, and yearns for his birth mother, who pushed him “through screaming madness/ and choking dust” into the arms of soldiers. (“My parents say they love me./ He says/ I'll always be his MVP./ She says./ I'm safe, I'm home./ But what about my mother in Vietnam?”) Matt's baseball coach and Vietnam vet piano teacher help ease his pain, but it is the patience and unconditional love of his new parents, gently emerging throughout the story, that proves the strongest healing force. The war-torn Vietnamese village that appears in Matt's recurring nightmares sharply contrasts with the haven he has in America. Burg presents lasting images of both. Ages 11–up.

This debut novel is short, compelling, and bittersweet. It's two years after the Vietnam War has ended. Ten-year-old Matt Pin was airlifted out of his native country to "safety" in the U.S., but what he experiences here includes discrimination and nightmares of the life he left behind. Despite a loving adoptive family, Matt struggles. He is an ace Little Leaguer, but a teammate who lost a brother in Vietnam directs his anger at Matt. Narrator Tobias Wong reads with heart and humor. While the novel is written in verse, Wong's haunting delivery carries the story with the immediacy of first-person prose. His quiet narration pulls us in, so we listen almost holding our breath as Matt's devastating secrets are revealed. M.M.C. (c) AudioFile 2011, Portland, Maine