August 2, 2012

SPEAK

BIBLIOGRAPHY


Anderson, Laurie Halse. 1999. SPEAK. New York: Farrar Straus Giroux.  ISBN: 0374371520 

PLOT SUMMARY

Melinda Sordino's freshman year of high school is starting out terrible.  The summer before school started she was raped by a senior.  She called the police to report the rape, but everyone thought she was just trying to break up the party.  As everyone scattered, so did she, and a report was never made to the police.  As a matter of fact, she never told anyone.  Since the party, her friends and classmates will no longer have anything to do with her, leading to a miserable school year.  Not only has her relationship with her friends deteriorated, so have her grades and her home life.  Her silence is a plea for help, but it mostly goes unnoticed.  As the summer sun starts to shine after a long winter and spring, Melinda finally finds the strength to speak.    

CRITICAL ANALYSIS

Laurie Anderson creates fabulously written tale of teenage life and trauma of a young girl in this contemporary realistic fiction novel.  SPEAK is written from the perspective of Melinda, the main character, who is funny, real, and relatable.  The reader is able to fully understand what Melinda is going through because of the language and details that are shared about her thoughts, interactions, and feelings throughout the story.  The story is broken up by marking period, beginning on the first day of school and ending on the last day, reminding the reader how long it takes Melinda to even begin to overcome the traumatic event that occurred during the summer. 

Melinda's lonely journey through her freshman year is one that most high school students today could relate to on some level.  The story deals with the cliques and harsh realities that kids in high school face.  Her character starts out as a very weak girl, dealing silently with a traumatic event.  She deals with absolute torment from her classmates and people she used to call friends.  Her one escape from everything is her art class which eventually helps her to speak again.  As she learns to cope with the terrible incident and the maltreatment by her peers, she finally gains her strength and her voice back after her attacker tries to assault her again.  Although she is not healed, she can now begin to recover with the help of others.  

This is an compelling story of honesty and strength in the face of a terrible sexual assault.  Anderson does a great job of focusing on the issues Melinda deals with in her daily life instead of on the rape itself.  This allows for a wide variety of readers to connect with what Melinda goes through during her freshman year in high school while learning a valuable lesson about perseverance.  


AWARDS & REVIEW EXCERPTS

Awards:

Michael L. Printz Honor (2000)
National Book Award Nominee for Young People's Literature (1999)
Golden Kite Award for Fiction (1999)
Horn Book Fanfare Best Book (2000)
BCCB Blue Ribbon Book (1999)
Edgar Award Nominee for Best Young Adult (2000)
South Carolina Book Award for Young Adult Book Award (2002)
ALA's Top Ten Best Books for Young Adults (2000)
Abraham Lincoln Award Nominee (2005)

Review Excerpts:

"A ninth grader becomes a social pariah when she calls the police to bust a summer bash and spends the year coming to terms with the secret fact that she was raped during the party. A story told with acute insight, acid wit, and affecting prose." School Library Journal (December 1999)

"A frightening and sobering look at the cruelty and viciousness that pervade much of contemporary high school life, as real as today's headlines." Kirkus Reviews (1999)

"In her YA fiction debut, Anderson perfectly captures the harsh conformity of high-school cliques and one teen's struggle to find acceptance from her peers. Melinda's sarcastic wit, honesty, and courage make her a memorable character whose ultimate triumph will inspire and empower readers." Booklist (Vol. 96, No. 2 (September 15, 1999))


CONNECTIONS

-Have students write about a time when they or someone else has tried to ignore something that couldn't be ignored
-Have students write down anonymously something that they need to speak out about
- Resources:

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