Speak

Speak
by Laurie Halse Anderson
Reviewed by Jayla



Melinda Sordino is a very quiet 9th-grade freshman at Merryweather High School in Central New York. She was once a popular girl with lots of friends, but now she is an outcast. At an end of the summer party, she calls the cops and they bust the place after she is attacked by IT, now no one talks to her, or even is willing to listen to her side of the story. This year IT is back and continues to taunt her, which makes her afraid and her will to speak lessens. Her only friend was the talkative new girl from Ohio, you would think that with her having a chatty friend it would encourage her to speak up more often, but as time goes by Melinda becomes more and more quiet, practically to the point of silence.

One reason I like this book is because of how effortlessly funny it is. Even though it doesn't directly tell a joke, it’s still humous because of the situations that occur. For instance, in one part of the book, it says that she was invited by Heather (the new girl from Ohio), to go to her house. Melinda, who doesn't have many friends and doesn't want to lose this one agrees to come over. While she is their Heather is going on and on about the new club she had joined (the Martha’s) and Melinda was sitting there picking lint balls off her shirt. Melinda says that when she is talking to heather all she has to do is say “that's not fair”, “I totally can relate” even when she can't and occasionally nod her head. It’s funny to me that the friend, in this case, is totally oblivious to the fact that Melinda is not listening to her and could care less about her situation.

Another thing I like about the book is that it teaches people to always speak up for yourself, especially when something as traumatizing as what happened to Melinda is going on. In the book and even the movie, I think it's a great example of how things are when she didn't talk about her problem. In the book and movie, they show Melinda as a very quiet girl who basically is excluded from the joy that should be experienced in someone's freshman year. I also would like to say that I think the movie is a good representation of the book, and that Kristen Stewart did a great job portraying Melinda’s part.

This book is written in a way that is suspenseful in a sense. In the book, you don't know what Melinda called the cops for until the end and then you understand why she was so scared of IT. In my opinion, it's like a mystery. The way that it has layers and explains why Melinda is so distant, and not your ordinary teen. The way it's layered is backward, what I mean by this is that it firsts talks about how things are after the summer, instead of talking about what caused her to change so abruptly. Then, towards the end, it tells more about the party and what occurred that led up to her calling the cop.

In conclusion, I think that Speak is an amazing book. I think that it gives you a good look into someone else’s life, and their experience. Though the book's topic is a very sensitive one, Speak explains it in a way that helps the victim to overcome. In the end, everything turns out alright, she learned to accept what happened. “IT happened. There is no avoiding it, no forgetting. No running away, or flying, or burying, or hiding”