All the Broken Pieces
by Ann Berg
ages: 10+
First sentence:
“My name is Matt Pin
and her name, I remember,
is Phang My.”
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This one is set right after the Vietnam War, and deals with the tensions — both in Vietnam and in America — brought on because of that war. Matt Pin is a 12 year old Vietnamese boy who was airlifted out of Vietnam two years ago — his mother sent him away — and adopted by a nice American family. He’s dealing with a lot of things: guilt (for leaving his mother and younger brother in Vietnam among other things), loneliness, hatred, uncertainty. The novel follows his growth — though baseball, through meetings with Vietnam vets, through piano lessons — to acceptance of his past and of his present.

Told through spare but lovely verse, this novel is haunting at times, yet ultimately hopeful.

Umbrella Summer
by Lisa Graff
ages: 9+
First sentence: “If you started to squeeze your brakes right in the middle of heading down Maple Hill, just as you were passing old Mr. Normore’s mailbox, you could coast into the bike rack in front of Lippy’s Market without making a single tire squeak.”
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Annie believes you can never be too careful. She’s determined that while there are lots and lots of dangerous things you can do — like fly or drive — it’s not those things that you need to worry about. No, it’s the little things that can kill you — like the undetected heart defect that killed her not-quite-12 year old brother, Jared. So, Annie has determined that if she stays perfectly, totally, completely safe then nothing bad will ever happen to her.

It’s only through a fight with her friend, and the interference of a new neighbor, who is suffering from her own loss, that Annie begins to come out of her shell — out from underneath the umbrella of her sadness — and learns how to live again.

It’s a cute book — I know that sounds weird in conjunction with the subject matter, but cute is really the first word that comes to mind — that manages to never feel either overwhelmingly sad or callous in its treatment of the death of a loved one.

(Just for the record: because these are Cybils nominees, I’ve been asked to make sure y’all know this is my opinion only, and not that of the panel.)