Four undocumented Mexican American students, two great teachers, one robot-building contest...and a major motion picture.
In 2004, four Latino teenagers arrived at the Marine Advanced Technology Education Robotics Competition at the University of California, Santa Barbara. They were born in Mexico but raised in Phoenix, Arizona, where they attended an underfunded public high school. No one had ever suggested to Oscar, Cristian, Luis, or Lorenzo that they might amount to much - but two inspiring science teachers had convinced these impoverished, undocumented kids from the desert who had never even seen the ocean that they should try to build an underwater robot.
And build a robot they did. Their robot wasn't pretty, especially compared to those of the competition. They were going up against some of the best collegiate engineers in the country, including a team from MIT backed by a $10,000 grant from ExxonMobil. The Phoenix teenagers had scraped together less than $1,000 and built their robot out of scavenged parts. This was never a level competition - and yet, against all odds... they won!
But this is just the beginning for these four, whose story - which became a key inspiration to the DREAMers movement - will go on to include first-generation college graduations, deportation, bean-picking in Mexico, and service in Afghanistan.
Joshua Davis' Spare Parts is a story about overcoming insurmountable odds and four young men who proved they were among the most patriotic and talented Americans in this country - even as the country tried to kick them out.
224 pages (December 2014)
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Joshua Davis talks about the students on CNN:
Joshua Davis at the American Library Association Conference 2015:
This title is available for download as an eBook and as an eAudioBook. Learn more about downloadables from the library here.
Title Read-alikes: The Newcomers by Helen Thorpe; 14 Miles by D. W. Gibson; Science Fair Season by Judy Dutton; The New Cool by Neal Bascomb; School of Dreams by Edward Humes; The Newcomers by Helen Thorpe; The Smartest Kids in the World by Amanda Ripley; The Book of Isaias by Daniel Connolly; Hold Fast to Dreams by Beth Zasloff; A Good Provider Is One Who Leaves by Jason DeParle; The House of Broken Angels by Luis Alberto Urrea; The Distance Between Us by Reyna Grande; Some Assembly Required by Ann Andrews; and The Tortilla Curtain by T. Coraghessan Boyle.
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