Speak

BY: Laurie Halse Anderson

Since the beginning of the school year, high school freshman Melinda has found that it's been getting harder and harder for her to speak out loud: "My throat is always sore, my lips raw.... Every time I try to talk to my parents or a teacher, I sputter or freeze.... It's like I have some kind of spastic laryngitis."
High school should be the best time of Melinda's life. Instead, freshman year is a nightmare, as Melinda finds herself rejected by her friends, cut off from her parents, and unable to reveal a terrible secret. Melinda's slow healing process is a realistic and compelling one, and readers will cheer for the strength she finally finds.

Anderson speaks as a true social outcast. Finally a book without much use or relation to the usual cliché, ho-hum social pyramids in most schools.
At first seemingly unnecessarily grim and on the way predictable. The way the story spreads and unfolds from that simple secret resulting in her mutism leaves the story to be a very causal and simple read. However, it takes some patience to pick up the pieces to discover the secret she hides crumble by crumble told by Anderson.
Where in situations where silence seems to be the only way out or rather only way to forget, cause it's only in these situations some become "adults" and try to handle things completely on their own. We follow this subject where forces help her fight against her fear.
I especially love the development of art and Melinda in her quest to speak.