Jade (16) loves collage art and photography. She is a scholarship student at a mostly white prestigious private school and lives in what others consider a questionable area of Portland, Ore. She is invited to join the Woman to Woman program and if she stays with it for her last two years of high school she is guaranteed a college scholarship.
During her junior year Jade makes friends with Sam (Samantha) who rides the same city bus to school. It isn’t long before things begin to chafe her, how her new white friend makes excuses for prejudiced behavior and how she feels sometimes that the school, and even her mentor, Maxine (who is black), thinks she needs saving. She finally works on speaking up for herself. When she hears about a black girl at a pool party who was beaten by police, she has trouble dealing with it, but finally finds a positive way to respond (with others) and make a difference. Similar in some ways to
The Hate U Give by Angie Thomas, which I will be reading next.
Piecing Me Together is the winner of the 2018 Coretta Scott King Author Award, as well as being named a 2018 Newbery Honor Book.
The Hate U Give received the 2018 William C. Morris Award for a debut book published by a first-time author writing for teens, was named a 2018 Coretta Scott King Author Honor book, and a 2018 Michael L. Printz Honor book.
Watson, Renée.
Piecing Me Together. Bloomsbury USA Childrens, 2017. Print.
