Laurie Halse Anderson
ISBN 0374371520
198 pages
Farrar Straus Giroux, 1999
Genre: Issue Novel
Reader's Annotation
After she is raped, 13-year-old Melinda retreats in silence, speaking as little as possible in school and at home.
Plot Summary
Melinda starts her freshman year at Merriweather High School as an outsider; she alienated most of the high school when she called the cops during a wild party over the summer. What Melinda never told anyone--not her best friend Rachel, not her parents--was that she was raped by a senior that night, but when it came time to tell the police, she clammed up and could not speak. In her pain, Melinda wonders if anyone would notice if she stopped speaking altogether. Her silence leads her to be an astute and often funny observer of human nature: her distracted, unhappy parents, the teachers who'd rather be elsewhere, the various social cliques.
Her art teacher seems to be the only one urging students to express their real emotions, and through art, Melinda finds a new way of self-expression. The book, which takes place over the course of a year, details both the depths of Melinda's pain and the promise of recovery.
Critical Summary
Speak is at once haunting and funny, painful and redemptive. In her masterful first-person narrative, Anderson is completely effective at evoking Melinda's head-space and getting the reader to understand how and why Melinda has gone silent.
She creates a deep cast of characters that all ring true, that people will recognize from their own high school: the spacey English teacher who tries anything to reach her students, the teacher who's more interested in promoting his own personal agenda, the principal who only cares about keeping the PTA parents happy. The students, too: the best friend from junior high who tries to reinvent herself as a freshman, the friend of convenience who only cares what she can get from you, the smart, principled boy you admire from afar, the jock girl you want to hate but can't because she's so genuinely friendly.
Anderson takes some risk with sentence structure and wordplay, which adds a bit of poetry to the prose. Her descriptions of Melinda's art is especially effective; we understand how, in learning how to express herself through an emotionally true piece of art, she takes baby steps towards expressing her truth verbally.
About the author
Anderson has written a number of books for children and young adults. Many of her young adult novels have been incredibly well-received critically. She's won numerous awards. She often deals with themes of depression and death in her novels, which are equally contemporary and historical. Speak was her first novel.
Curriculum ties
Booktalking Ideas
1. If you are doing a booktalk with another person, have one person stand up there silent while the other person "voice overs" the booktalk from Melinda's point of view.
2. Talk about Melinda's first day of high school and her feelings of apprehension.
3. Talk about the role of art class in high school and in Melinda's recovery.
Reading Interest/Level
Because of the subject matter, I'd rate it at 9th grade or above.
Challenge Issues
The subject matter of rape could be challenged. There are some swears, some teenage drinking (Melinda is drunk when she is raped), and some violence (Melinda is attacked again at the end of the book). While trying to deal with her pain, Melinda spends her freshman year as a delinquent, cutting classes and failing most of her classes.
If the book were challenged, the librarian should read the book, if possible, and if not, familiarize herself with it through various professional reviews and through sites like Common Sense Media, which list many of the possibly controversial details of the work.
The librarian should also be familiar with the library's collection criteria and be able to explain to the challenger why the book fits the policy. She could show the challenger any of the many positive reviews Speak has earned and show its placement on a number of lists of best books for young adults. She could also point out that it was a Printz Honor Book.
Selection Criteria
I noticed this book has been mentioned in many of the readings we've had for the class as almost the paragon of the perfect modern young adult novel. After reading and loving Anderson's Wintergirls, I had to read her best-known work.
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