Wikipedia:Spare Parts: Four Undocumented Teenagers, One Ugly Robot, and the Battle for the American Dream

Spare Parts: Four Undocumented Teenagers, One Ugly Robot, and the Battle for the American Dream is a 2014 New York Times best-seller by Joshua Davis about four teenage immigrants who built an underwater robot for the Marine Advanced Technology Education Robotics Competition and won, besting some of the top collegiate engineers in the country. Published by MacMillan, the book is based on Davis' 2005 article "La Vida Robot" for Wired Magazine.

Plot
Spare Parts tells the story of Oscar, Cristian, Luis, and Lorenzo, four undocumented Latino teenagers who competed in 2004 in the Marine Advanced Technology Education Robotics Competition at the University of California, Santa Barbara. Inspired by two high school science teachers, the group works to build an underwater robot that, despite its clunky appearance, excels in function. The boys triumph against some of the top college engineers in the country including a team from MIT. The boys' adventure in robotics is told against the backdrop of an undocumented coming-of-age experience in America, including first-generation college graduations, deportation, bean-picking in Mexico, and service in Afghanistan. Spare Parts is a story of four young men overcoming odds stacked against them culturally, economically, and politically, proving their grit, ingenuity, and patriotism inside a country that is trying to kick them out.

Reception
Critical response to Spare Parts has been overwhelmingly positive. The BBC selected the book for its "Ten Books To Read" Series, and Amazon selected it as one of its "Best Books of the Month" for December 2014.

Spare Parts has been adopted by over 40 high schools and colleges for shared reading programs, including Kansas State University, Rutgers University, Johns Hopkins University, and Texas A&M.

Adaptation
Spare Parts was adapted adapted into the movie [|Spare Parts] by Lionsgate starring George Lopez, Jamie Lee Curtis and Marisa Tomei. It premiered in January 2015.