Speak
Author(s): Laurie Halse Anderson
The first ten lies they tell you in high school.
"Speak up for yourself--we want to know what you have to say." From the first moment of her freshman year at Merryweather High, Melinda knows this is a big fat lie, part of the nonsense of high school. She is friendless, outcast, because she busted an end-of-summer party by calling the cops, so now nobody will talk to her, let alone listen to her. As time passes, she becomes increasingly isolated and practically stops talking altogether. Only her art class offers any solace, and it is through her work on an art project that she is finally able to face what really happened at that terrible party: she was raped by an upperclassman, a guy who still attends Merryweather and is still a threat to her. Her healing process has just begun when she has another violent encounter with him. But this time Melinda fights back, refuses to be silent, and thereby achieves a measure of vindication. In Laurie Halse Anderson's powerful novel, an utterly believable heroine with a bitterly ironic voice delivers a blow to the hypocritical world of high school. She speaks for many a disenfranchised teenager while demonstrating the importance of speaking up for oneself.
Speak was a 1999 National Book Award Finalist for Young People's Literature.
Review(s):
“Speaking out at the 'wrong' time-calling 911 from a teen drinking party-has made Melinda a social outcast; now she barely speaks at all. . .While Melinda's smart and savvy interior narrative slowly reveals the searing pain of that 911 night, it also nails the high-school experience cold. . .An uncannily funny book even as it plumbs the darkness, Speak will hold readers from first word to last.” —Starred, The Horn Book
Winner PA Carolyn W. Field Award (2000), American Library Association Best Books for Young Adults (2000), Nominated Edgar Allan Poe Award Nominee (2000), Kentucky Blue Grass Award, Long-listed School Library Best Books of the Year, Bulletin of the Center for Children's Books Blue Ribbon Award, American Library Association Quick Picks for Young Adults, Long-listed ALA Quick Picks for Reluctant Young Adults, Winner BCCB Blue Ribbon Award (1999), Michael L. Printz Award - Honor, Commended Michael L. Printz Award - Honor (2000), Short-listed National Book Awards - Finalist (1999), Winner Kentucky Blue Grass Award (2001), Bulletin of the Center for Children's Books Blue Ribbon Award (1999), Long-listed Booklist Editors' Choice, Horn Book Magazine Fanfare List, School Library Journal Best Books of the Year, American Library Association Quick Picks for Reluctant Young Adults, Winner NYPL Books for the Teen Age, National Book Awards - Finalist, Winner Golden Kite Award Winner (2000), American Library Association Best Books for Young Adults, Long-listed Horn Book Magazine Fanfare List (2000), Edgar Allen Poe Award Nominee (2000), Books for the Teen Age, New York Public Library, Winner California Young Reader Medal (2003), Golden Kite Award for Fiction, Winner California Young Reader Medal, Long-listed ALA Best Books for Young Adults (2000)
ISBN: 9780374371524