2. Plot Summary. "I have entered high school with the wrong hair, the wrong clothes, the wrong attitude. And I don't have anyone to sit with. I am Outcast." So begins the story of Melinda. A few weeks before school is to start, she attends a party where many high school kids are celebrating the last glorious days of summer. However, Melinda calls the police to come break up the party. Everyone knows she did it, but no one knows why. And she's not telling - anyone. So when school finally begins, Melinda is a marginalized member of a class who knows she ruined everyone's fun. As the year progresses, Melinda finally begins to find ways to express her frustrations and fears through art, and when the students in her class find out what really happened at that party, Melinda's year of being unable to speak is finally over.
3. Critical Analysis. Anderson hooks readers immediately with the first few paragraphs in her novel. Melinda is an outcast, and it becomes quickly evident that something is going on besides the angst that goes along with the first day of high school. Something has happened that has caused her friends to reject her, and Melinda isn't talking to anyone about what it was. In fact, Melinda is not talking much at all. For her entire freshman year, Melinda rarely says a word to anyone. The only place where she feels comfortable is in art class, where her teacher Mr. Freeman - something of a rebel and constantly in some kind of trouble with administration - has given a year-long project to students to create art out of a word drawn randomly from a pile of words. Melinda has drawn the word "tree" and is spending the year sketching, painting, sculpting and creating trees. Interestingly, her trees always look half dead, but Mr. Freeman continues to encourage her to go where her heart is leading her. He understands that something is on Melinda's mind that she is unable to share. He quietly, gently offers to listen if she ever wants to talk, but in the meantime, the tree obviously has meaning for Melinda and he encourages her to continue to work with it. Mr. Freeman is the one sympathetic adult in this novel.
Melinda is exhibiting the symptoms that many young adults show when they have a traumatic experience. Melinda has been raped at a party by an older student. For reasons she doesn't explain, Melinda doesn't tell anyone until her friend Rachel begins dating the rapist. Then Melinda begins to feel compelled to warn her friend. However, that goes wrong, too, for a while. But Melinda perseveres, and in the end, she is obviously going to be a survivor of her ordeal. At the end of the novel, after everything has come out, she is surprised by the fact that she not only is no longer an outcast but something of a hero.
Some reviews criticize the unlikely coincidence that the girls' lacrosse team happens by when Melinda is struggling with Andy after he's trapped Melinda in a janitor's closet with him. However, anyone who has hung around in a high school for very long knows that many students stay at school for hours after classes are over - athletic practices, club meetings, social organizations all keep kids and teachers at school long after the last bell rings. This doesn't seem to be such a stretch for me as a high school teacher. However, the nice part is that Melinda has already turned the situation before the girls arrive when she manages to threaten Andy with a piece of broken mirror which she's pushed into his throat. She gets the help she needs AFTER she has begun to provide the help for herself, after she's been able to scream "NO" to him and to herself, after she has been able to start to regain her voice, literally and figuratively.
In response to the 10-year anniversary of Speak in 2009, Anderson wrote a poem titled "Listen" which uses the words and phrases from thousands of letters she and Melinda received over the years. Anderson reads the poem on her website. If you have read Speak, you MUST go listen to her poem. What a powerful, moving piece.
The website is http://madwomanintheforest.com/youngadult-speak/
A copy of the poem, for those of us who are also visual and like to combine the sound of the poem with the look of the poem can be found on her blog at http://speakupaboutspeak.blogspot.com/ Scroll down to the Thursday, February 26, 2009 entry to find a copy of the poem which can be printed.
4. Review Excerpts
Publisher's Weekly: "In a stunning first novel, Anderson uses keen observations and vivid imagery to pull readers into the head of an isolated teenager."
School Library Journal: "This is a compelling book, with sharp, crisp writing that draws readers in, engulfing them in the story."
The Horn Book, starred review: "An uncannily funny book even as it plumbs the darkness, Speak will hold readers from first word to last."
Kirkus Reviews, pointer review: "The plot is gripping and the characters are powerfully drawn...its raw and unvarnished look...will be hard for readers to forget."
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