88 pages • 2 hours read
All the Broken Pieces
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Summary and Study Guide
Overview
All the Broken Pieces is a novel in verse by Ann E. Burg, first published in 2009 and geared toward middle grade readers. The novel won the Jefferson Cup Award for children’s historical fiction and was named an IRA Notable Book for a Global Society, as well as a Booklist Editors’ Choice and YALSA Best Book for Young Adults. Burg was also nominated for a NAACP Image Award for Outstanding Literary Work. With a sparse free verse style and an emphasis on emotion and imagery, All the Broken Pieces tells the story of a Vietnamese American boy trying to adjust to life with his adoptive American family, after spending the first nine years of his life in war-torn Vietnam.
Content Warning: The source material features violence, war, and ableist perspectives.
All the Broken Pieces begins with seventh-grader Matt Pin’s fragmented memories of a Vietnam filled with “fear and fog […] smoke and death” (3). Matt mentions his birth mother Phang My; an American father who left Phang My and her children, promising to return but never doing so; and Matt’s younger brother, who has “stumps instead of legs” (9).
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