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Overview
Overview
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.
- Format: TradePaperback
- Author: Anderson, Laurie Halse
- ISBN: 9780312674397
- Condition: Used
- Dimensions: 8.25 x 0.63
- Number Of Pages: 224
- Publication Year: 2011
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Hold your Peace
Faith R. - 6 years 3 months agoThe protagonist was fascinating . The story kept you reading page after page and it didn't ever feel bland . There was copies at my school for the English classes.
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What you Want to Say
Dylan P. - 6 years 5 months agoI read this book three years ago, and I still think about it a lot. The thing about Speak is that it shows no matter where you are in life, or what you feel you're unable to speak up about, you're not alone in that. That there are others who are in your place, too, and maybe they're waiting on you to have the strength to speak up for them. I plan on being a high school english teacher, and this was the first book on the list of what I hope to teach. It's the kind of book every high schooler should read.