Speak

Anderson, L. H. (1999). Speak. New York, NY: Penguin Books.

Melinda goes to a party the summer before entering high school.  She ends up calling the police and ruining the party.  As she starts high school the kids hate her from afar, even kids she doesn’t know. Her best friend Rachel has ostracized her and joined a new group.  She is an outcast.  She meets Heather in an assembly the first day and Heather befriends her because she is new, from Ohio, and doesn’t know Melinda’s story.  Heather eventually want to join another group and dumps Melinda as well.  Melinda’s grades drop and she struggles with what happened at the party, dealing with her parent’s failing marriage, and being a social outcast she must decide whether to help Rachel before she becomes the next victim. 

Anderson does a great job of dealing with a sticky subject, rape.  She writes the book as from a teenage girl’s journal and we feel like Melinda is talking to us about her life.  At first we don’t know what happened to her, we just know she called 911 and because of that she is totally left out by everyone at school.  Anderson set the book up into sections defined by grading periods.  We see as the year progresses Melinda’s grades continue to drop, but she has not told anyone what happened, in fact she will not talk to anyone.  She learns through her experience and in deciding to try to protect her friend she finds her voice and is able to Speak. This book would probably be good for 8th grade and up because of the content.  

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QX7qdZGaJ7E book trailer

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MJU7b3C8QMk author interview

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ic1c_MaAMOI poem “Listen” about Speak