Piecing Me Together

by Renée Watson
Bloomsbury USA Children’s, 2017
Young adult, fiction
Ages: 12 and up, Grades 8-12
ISBN: 978-1681191058

High school can be exciting, but for teens who are struggling to fit in, it also can be a long few years to get through. Jade, the main character in the young adult novel Piecing Me Together, is among those who count the days until graduation.

Jade is openly smart and secretly sassy, and happens to love Spanish as much as she loves her modest neighborhood. Every morning, she boards a bus to attend a predominantly white private school on the other side of town, where she can check most of the “other” boxes that exist: minority student, thick rather than thin, child of a single parent, a product of a low-income household. She endures feeling invisible and “not enough” so that she can someday give wings to her mother’s dream that she experience a better life.

When she is coerced into joining a mentoring group that offers encouragement and opportunities, Jade balks. Yet once she settles in, she is surprised to learn that it is just what she needs, and that perhaps rather than solely being the recipient of others’ generosity, she, too, has much to give.

Author Renee Watson has produced a compelling first-person story that can help readers value their own, and others’, experiences and circumstances.
– SHA