Tolog Book Review: Speak

Speak
by Laurie Halse Anderson
reviewed by Jacqueline Gevorgian

Speak by Laurie Halse Anderson demonstrates the struggles of high school featuring Melinda Sordino as the main character who is a freshman, outcast, loser and complete social reject. This book completely captures the essence of the average public high school that includes the nerds, jocks, outcasts, and cliques. Melinda bears a huge secret and is in deep depression, and with her parents constantly arguing she faces challenges everyday by herself. She says, “I am alone, no one even asked me what happened,” this quote describes exactly how she is facing the world, alone and quiet with no one to rely on. As she goes through high school she learns that she does have a voice and begins to speak up and learns she is important and worthy. 

This book is about a young individual who starts out as a normal happy girl and later becomes terribly depressed, ostracized by her friends and ultimately hopeless. As the book goes on you see this transformation of her becoming less and less depressed as she fights through her problems and begins to speak out about her assault instead of staying quiet.

Laurie Halse Anderson does an excellent job portraying the struggles that many people face. This book has many morals, not only that everything can always get better but also that you should never judge a person based on who you think they are. 

Melinda was just seen as “that girl who called the cops and ruined the party.”` No one actually knew why she busted the party but they assumed that she did it to ruin their fun, and they judged her for that. After ruining the party she begins to withdraw herself from her friends because they began to ridicule her. She was judged for all the wrong reasons. 

Anderson’s moral in the book is to never judge a person based on their actions. This book is extremely inspiring. It doesn’t only educate but it teaches readers to understand other individuals and what their circumstances are.  Speak can have you laughing or ready to get yourself a tissue box, but it is definitely a must-read. Since being published in 1999 Speak has won over 10 national awards and has been translated into sixteen different languages.