'When You Reach Me' by Rebecca Stead

Stead, Rebecca. (2009). When You Reach Me. New York: Yearling.  ISBN: 9780375850868 (pbk)

Photo by: L. Propes

They say a single butterfly flapping its wings in China can set off events thousands of miles away on the other side of the globe.  In science fiction, there is often a single moment in time -- the flapping of a butterfly's wings, so to speak -- that can change the future, and not always for the better.  Time travel is an oft-used trope in science fiction.  Whether it's the slingshot around the sun employed by Gene Roddenberry's Star Trek, Dr. Sam Beckett and his Project Quantum Leap, a British telephone box inhabited by a Time Lord, or a tiny, magical hourglass in Harry Potter, time travel is often used as a way to re-set history or find that tiny moment in time where a single action can send a person's future down one road or another.

Rebecca Stead's When You Reach Me is a novel that involves a character who eventually figures out how to manipulate time and space, written in a low fantasy style.  While the concept of time travel forms the underlying plot of the novel, it is primarily a coming-of-age story about Miranda, who lives in New York City with her mother in the late 1970s.  Miranda lives a relatively normal life.  She has her best and oldest friend, Sal.  Things have an order and logic that Miranda finds comforting.  Everything changes the day Marcus punches her friend Sal in the stomach for no particular reason.

As the novel progresses, Miranda makes some new friends in Annemarie and Colin, discovers why Sal has been avoiding her since the incident with Marcus, helps her mother prepare to appear on the television show The $20,000 Pyramid, uncovers the identity of the crazy man that lives on the street corner near her apartment, and learns that things -- and people -- are not always the what they seem.  She even discovers common ground with the girl she dislikes.  Miranda also begins to understand that  that material possessions do not necessarily translate into parental love and affection.

The novel's structure revolves around a letter Miranda is supposed to write to an unnamed person, describing the events of the past several months.  She starts forming the letter in her head, reexamining what has happened to her in the light of a recent revelation, but insists she isn't going to write the letter, until she realizes who asked her to write the letter and why.  The action shifts smoothly from Miranda's present, while she drafts the letter, to the previous months.  Stead's writing effectively mimics the way a person's mind can switch to a new topic at the mention of a specific person or event.  The entire book becomes the process by which Miranda writes the letter and comes to the decision to give it to the right person, as she connects seemingly unrelated events to one another that pinpoint the recipient of the letter.  Stead gives the reader a delayed climax.  What you think might be the climax is only the beginning of the actual climax, which occurs near the end of the novel.

Stead's novel is populated by a cast of characters from the sullen and misunderstood Marcus to the privileged Annemarie and Julia to the patient and tolerant Richard.  The audience sees them through Miranda's eyes, so we see them from the perspective of a twelve year-old girl, discovering who the characters are, beyond their first impression, as Miranda does.  The characters are appropriate for their age and time period.  The children are just reaching an age where they want to test their boundaries, and Stead perfectly captures Miranda's voice as she explores her new-found maturity.  The characters are complex, often tossing off flippant remarks without a thought for the consequences.  Their actions come back to haunt them, and Stead shows them dealing with the ramifications in a realistic manner.  This allows the characters to grow and adapt as their situations change.  The children behave like typical young adolescents.  In one particularly poignant moment,  as Miranda prepares for her new friend Annemarie to come for a sleepover, Miranda's new-found shame at the bedraggled state of the apartment she shares with her mother in relation to the luxurious environment of Annemaries' radiates painfully from the page.

The setting is late 1970s New York, and Stead gives it the tiny details that evoke the era.  The deli where Miranda, Annemarie, and Colin spend their lunch hours, streakers, the odd crazy person on the street corner, and the expressions the children and adults use in their day-to-day lives, capture the image of the 1970s.  The descriptions of Miranda's mother's clothing and hair, and the pervasive presence of shag carpeting also help complete the mental picture of the era.  Younger readers might find themselves amazed at the amount of freedom Miranda and her classmates have to leave campus for lunch and wander unsupervised about the city without so much as a mobile phone on their pocket.

Stead's theory of time travel, as presented in the book, isn't terribly difficult to understand.  Some might have to re-read the theory, as presented by Marcus and Julia a few times, but the visuals Stead uses to illustrate the theory explain it well.  Stead keeps the time-travel element to a minimum, making the book more about  Miranda and how she wrestles with the decision whether or not to write the letter to the mystery person.

Overall, the book begins a bit slowly, but the pace soon picks up and the book races to its conclusion.

The Junior Library Guild has a study guide teachers can use with their classes while reading  When You Reach Me.  It includes cross-curricular lessons, like why the Miranda warning is so important that Miranda's mother named her for it.  Random House also provides a study guide, with several cross-curricular ideas teachers can use.  Teachers can use When You Reach Me as a way to discuss social activism, city planning, the theory of relativity, or as an introduction to Madeline L'Engle's A Wrinkle in Time.

Students might also want to read Stead's other novels: Liar and Spy and First Light.  When You Reach Me won the 2010 Newberry Award, in an interesting parallel with A Wrinkle in Time, which also won the Newberry Award in 1963.  So much of this novel was influenced by A Wrinkle in Time, that students might also want to read it, and the other novels of the Time Quintet: A Wind in the Door, Many Waters, A Swiftly Tilting Planet, and An Acceptable Time.

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"Rebecca Stead brilliantly weaves details of setting from memories of her own teen years on the Upper West Side, including a strange individual and her mom's appearance with Dick Clark on The $20,000 Pyramid.  The story's science fiction aspect will not become readily apparent until almost the very end, but it is crucial to the plot.  Reading A Wrinkle in Time is not necessary in order to enjoy the book, but it does make it more fun." -- James Blasingame, Journal of Adolescent & Adult Literacy, 2011

"The first indication that this book is going to get deeply, seductively weird is when broody classmate Marcus engages the heroine, Miranda, in a discussion about a flaw in the logic of A Wrinkle in Time...  Miranda's life is an ordinary round of family and school...  But when her best friend is bizarrely punched by another boy on the street, and when she starts receiving anonymous notes that seem to foretell the future, it's clear that all is not as it seems...  Closing revelations are startling and satisfying but quietly made, their reverberations giving plenty of impetus for the reader to back to the beginning and catch what was missed." -- Roger Sutton, Horn Book Magazine, 2009

"Miranda experiences a lot in sixth grade.  She loses her best friend, her mom goes on a game show, she learns there is a dentist's office inside her school, and she enjoys her first job.  Stead has written a story about a typical 12-year-old girl; although... there is some compelling mystery the reader is hard-pressed to discover.  The best parts of the story are the characters.  There is Miranda herself who is thoughtful and smart, but she doesn't think much of it.  Marcus is a troubled boy but no one really seems to know him.  There are best friends Julia and Annemarie, but their friendship is put to a serious test when Julia acts snobby once too often.  And, there is the mysterious writer of the notes Miranda keep finding... The topics are interesting, and the short chapters keep the pace flowing quickly." -- Shelly Glantz, Library Media Connection, 2009

"Stead's novel is as much about character as story. Miranda's voice rings true with its faltering attempts at maturity and observation. The story builds slowly, emerging naturally from a sturdy premise. As Miranda reminisces, the time sequencing is somewhat challenging, but in an intriguing way. The setting is consistently strong. The stores and even the streets-in Miranda's neighborhood act as physical entities and impact the plot in tangible ways." -- Caitlin Augusta, School Library Journal, 2009

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References:

 Augusta, Caitlin. 2009. When you reach me. School Library Journal 55 (7) (07): 93-, http://ezproxy.twu.edu:2048/login?url=http://ezproxy.twu.edu:2060/login.aspx?direct=true&db=a9h&AN=43415849&site=ehost-live&scope=site.

Blasingame, James. 2011. When you reach me. Journal of Adolescent & Adult Literacy 54 (6) (03): 461-4, http://ezproxy.twu.edu:2048/login?url=http://ezproxy.twu.edu:2060/login.aspx?direct=true&db=a9h&AN=59423911&site=ehost-live&scope=site.

Glantz, Shelley. 2009. When you reach me. Library Media Connection 28 (2) (10): 74-, http://ezproxy.twu.edu:2048/login?url=http://ezproxy.twu.edu:2060/login.aspx?direct=true&db=a9h&AN=44773789&site=ehost-live&scope=site.

Sutton, Roger. 2009. When you reach me. Horn Book Magazine 85 (4) (Jul): 432-, http://ezproxy.twu.edu:2048/login?url=http://ezproxy.twu.edu:2060/login.aspx?direct=true&db=a9h&AN=42427896&site=ehost-live&scope=site.

'American Born Chinese' by Gene Luen Yang

Yang, Gene Luen. (2006). American Born Chinese. New York: Square Fish.  ISBN 9780312384487

Photo by: L. Propes

Identity is a touchy subject.  The world around us sees a version of ourselves that can be the opposite of the version we think we project.  Identity is at the heart of Gene Luen Yang's brilliant graphic novel American Born Chinese.  The book wrestles with the questions of what it means to straddle two cultures -- American and Chinese -- without sublimating one for the other.

The back-of-the-book summary makes the graphic novel sound as if it contains three separate stories.  It does.  From the beginning of the book, it's clear that each story shares the same theme of trying to fit into a culture that cannot see past the superficial façade.  But the three stories are ultimately tied together in a mix of high and low fantasy to bring the story to its resolution.

The Monkey King, after being rejected by the gods, embarks on a quest to make his subjects more like people and himself more god-like in an effort to force the gods to accept him as one of them.  He even challenges Tze-Yo-Tzuh, the creator of all existence, to a duel.

Jin Wang was born in San Francisco to immigrant parents from Taiwan, who came to the United States to attend graduate school.  When Jin is nine, his parents move to a suburb, and Jin goes from being just another Chinese-American kid in Chinatown to one of only two Asian-American students in his school. (The other Asian-American student is Suzy Nakamura.)  In his new school, Jin must confront a litany of humiliating stereotypes from his classmates and even his teachers.  The arrival of Wei-Chin Sun reveals the depth to which Jin identifies as an American, even as he embraces his Chinese heritage.

Photo by: L. Propes
Jin and Wei-Chin, wearing
Yao Ming jerseys

Danny is an All-American teenager.  Tall, blonde, good-looking.  He plays a mean game of basketball and girls admire him.  The blot on his existence is his cousin Chin-Kee's annual visit from China.  Chin-Kee's extraordinarily disruptive visits damage Danny's reputation to the point where he must transfer to a new school for the next year.

While it might seem as if each storyline is a separate story, bound by a common theme, the plot lines intersect in a way that seem believable in the low fantasy world Yang has created.  Jin's story is central to the overall novel, illustrating the maze that he must navigate in American culture with his Chinese background.  Jin's cultural traditions are often at odds with the image he desires to project in school.  His struggles to fit into his desired social scene are echoed in the stories of the Monkey King and Danny.  Jin travels from pride and a common identity in Chinatown to outside status in his suburban schools and back to an understanding of what his heritage means to him.

The main characters -- Jin, Wei-Chin, the Monkey King, and Danny -- are all distinctive, intricate characters, which is quite a feat, given the short time we spend with each of them.  Yang lets them evolve with skill and complexity.  Chin-Kee is a grotesque caricature, reminiscent of the stereotype of a  Chinese immigrant from the late nineteenth century, and Yang uses this for a clear purpose, forcing Danny to confront why he represses his Chinese identity and to fight back against every indignity Danny has been subjected to from people who cannot see Danny beyond the color of his skin, name, or facial features.  Danny, it turns out, isn't the blonde All-American high school student as portrayed in the novel.  Years ago, Danny gave up his soul to become what he thinks he wants to be.  Who he really is neatly ties the three stories together into a satisfying conclusion.

Yang also remembers to infuse just enough comedy to balance the achingly poignant search for identity.  There are a few moments that bring a smile to the reader's lips.  Most are brief, almost throwaway moments, but they provide just enough of a break in the tension to prevent the story from becoming a study in abject misery.  Even Jin's struggles with his identity are subject to a humorous poke from Yang: when waiting for Wei-Chin at a Chinese bakery, Jin, who can speak Mandarin, but not read it, tries to order from a menu written in Chinese, only to have to waitress scoff at his lack of Chinese literacy when Jin points to the words, "cash only".

Photo by: L. Propes
From left: Jin Wang,
Suzy Nakamura, and Wei-Chin Sun

The text is just as much part of the artwork as the actual drawings.  Yang uses Chinese characters when the Monkey King invokes one of the kung-fu disciplines.  Text rendered in English, but it is intended to be spoken Mandarin is bracketed to give the reader a visual cue that the characters are no longer speaking English.  Each character, from the Monkey King and all the Chinese deities to Jin and his childhood friends from Chinatown and all the students in the suburban school are drawn as diverse and separate people.  None of them look alike and Yang takes pains to give each character distinct clothes and hairstyles.  It's an eye for the detail that helps the reader sort out the many characters that populate this novel.  The characters' body language often speaks for the characters when words fail.  The older Jin and Wei-Chin at the end of the novel are still recognizably their younger counterparts, and Yang ages them well.

American Born Chinese could be used in conjunction with many of Laurence Yep's books about growing up as a Chinese-American to study one facet of the immigrant experience.  The book can also provide the impetus to begin a discussion of racial stereotypes, and why Yang chose to appropriate one of the more monstrous stereotypes in an act of satire to make his point.

American Born Chinese won the 2007 Printz Award and was a finalist for the 2006 National Book Award for Young People's Literature.  It also won the Eisner Award for Best Graphic Album -- New.

Other graphic novels by Yang include: Level Up, and the acclaimed series Boxers & Saints, a graphic novel set during the Boxer Rebellion, telling both sides of the story, which was also a National Book Award finalist in 2013.

Students may also want to read one of Laurence Yep's novels about the Chinese-American experience, particularly Dragonwings.

You can view more about Yang and American Born Chinese here.  You can also find Yang's remarks at the 2013 National Book Awards, a book trailer for Boxers & Saints, and an interview with Yang.

Yang has a website with more information about his graphic novels and a blog.  He also includes the online version of his M.Ed. final project proposal about using comics in education.
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"This fable stars the mythological Monkey King, realistic youngster Jin Wang of Taiwanese parentage, and TV sitcom teen Danny.  All three are dogged by an unwanted identity and humiliated by others' prejudice... all three stories suddenly merge to centre on Jin coming to terms with his minority experience and moving beyond his own fear and hostility.  Coalescence comes almost too quickly, but the... approach and treatment are unique and moving.  The art is simple, colorful, and both attractive and effective." -- Martha Cornog, Library Journal, 2007

"With vibrant colors and visual panache, indie writer-illustrator Yang focuses on three characters in tales that touch on facets of Chinese American life... Each of the the characters is flawed but familiar, and, in a clever postmodern twist, all share a deep, unforeseen connection... The stories have a simple, engaging sweep to them, but their weighty subjects -- shame, racism, and friendship -- receive thoughtful, powerful examination." -- Jesse Karp, Booklist, 2006

"Graphic novels that focus on nonwhite characters are exceedingly rare in American comics.  Enter American Born Chinese, a well-crafted work that aptly explores issues of self-image, cultural identity, transformation, and self-acceptance... Yang's crisp line drawings, linear panel arrangement, and muted colours provide a strong visual complement to the textual narrative.  Like Toni Morrison's The Bluest Eye and Laurence Yep's Dragonwings, this novel explores the impact of the American dream on those outside the dominant culture in a finely wrought story that is an effective combination of humor and drama." -- Philip Charles Crawford, School Library Journal, 2006

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Works Cited:

Cornog, Martha. 2007. American born chinese. Library Journal 132 (5) (03/15): 54-, http://ezproxy.twu.edu:2048/login?url=http://ezproxy.twu.edu:2060/login.aspx?direct=true&db=a9h&AN=24382067&site=ehost-live&scope=site.

Crawford, Philip Charles. 2006. American born chinese. School Library Journal 52 (9) (09): 240-, http://ezproxy.twu.edu:2048/login?url=http://ezproxy.twu.edu:2060/login.aspx?direct=true&db=a9h&AN=22324532&site=ehost-live&scope=site.

Karp, Jesse. 2006. American born chinese. Booklist 103 (1) (9): 114, http://ezproxy.twu.edu:2048/login?url=http://ezproxy.twu.edu:2060/login.aspx?direct=true&db=a9h&AN=22370790&site=ehost-live&scope=site. 

'Speak' by Laurie Halse Anderson

Anderson, Laurie Halse. (2000). Speak. Narrated by Mandy Siegfried. New York: Random House Audio Publishing Group.  ISBN 9780739336724

Photo by: L. Propes

Being a teenager is difficult.  Cliques.  An unspoken demand for conformity.  Attempts to live up to a nearly impossible standard of femininity and masculinity.  Countless rules and regulations regarding behavior.  The seemingly inevitable and subtle bullying that occurs when one doesn't fit in.  And that's just within the halls of high school.  Even though Laurie Halse Anderson's Speak is set in the age just before social media exploded into students' lives, rumors still manage to rapidly burn through the ranks of students, leaving Anderson's main character, Melinda Sordino, in an isolated bubble.

Speak begins on Melinda's first day of high school.  It doesn't begin well.  Someone throws a Ho-Ho wrapper at her head on the bus.  No one wants to sit with her.  Melinda's best friends have suddenly diverged into new cliques now that they're in high school.  Melinda informs the reader, "I am clanless.  I wasted the last weeks of August watching bad cartoons.  I didn't go to the mall, the lake, or the pool or answer the phone.  I have entered high school with the wrong hair, the wrong clothes, the wrong attitude.  And I don't have anyone to sit with" (Anderson 2000, 4).  Melinda goes on to compare herself to a wounded animal, seeking succour anywhere she can find it.  Her former best friend, Rachel, openly detests her, and this is only the beginning of the book.

Things only go from bad to worse for Melinda.  Her grades drop.  Her parents constantly hound her about her grades and attitude.  Her new friend Heather can't decide whether to be friends with Melinda or drop her for one of the "cool" groups.  Melinda avoids speaking as much as possible.  Her social studies teacher, who already doesn't like Melinda, is unyielding and dictatorial.

Plus, Melinda's assigned subject for her year-long art class is a tree.  Trees remind Melinda far too much of what happened to her.  Not to mention the winter in Syracuse seems to last forever to Melinda.

The reason for Melinda's silence, depression, and isolation slowly reveals itself, and Anderson sprinkles hints throughout the book until Melinda tells the audience exactly what happened to her in August.  After Melinda refuses to attend a pizza party with her lab partner, David, and some of his friends, she forces herself to examine what happened to her.  Even though the word "rape" doesn't form part of Melinda's vocabulary until much later, it is very obvious that she was raped at a party a few weeks before school began.  Slowly, Melinda begins to emerge from her self-imposed shell, eventually reconnecting with Ivy, her other junior high friend, and Rachel.  Inspired by the anonymous, yet highly effective message board format of the girls' restroom walls, Melinda scrawls a message to stay away from her rapist.  The responses overwhelmingly affirm Melinda's statement, and she realizes she's not alone.  More importantly, she concludes the rape was not her fault.

Anderson allows Melinda the opportunity to find her voice, just as the school year draws to a close, and she decides to tell Mr. Freeman, the art teacher, about the events of the past several months.  Anderson does tie up some plot threads here, but there are others that she leaves as open-ended questions.  Speak arguably falls into the category of a problem novel, but Anderson never sends the narrative into moralizing territory.

Much of the narrative of Speak occurs as Melinda's internal monologue.  It contains Melinda's often wry, pointed observations of high school as well as displaying a dry, sardonic sense of humor.  Those flashes of humor prevent the book from becoming bogged down in desolation.  Melinda has a perfect foil in Heather, the new girl from Ohio.  In contrast to Melinda's retreating silence, Heather talks too much, is far too eager to please, and somewhat disingenuous.  The adults in the room often come off as one dimensional -- clueless father, waspish mother, befuddled principal, etc. -- but given that the story is narrated by Melinda, it's to be expected.  There comes a point where you want to shake Melinda's parents and make them really look at their daughter and see the roiling waters below the surface.  They do know something is wrong with Melinda, but there's little effort beyond making token statements about doing anything about it.

Melinda is a believable character, as is her narration.  The language off all the teenage characters is exactly what one would expect to hear in the mouth and head of a teenager, especially ones who are still on the cusp of childhood and adolescence.  The other teenaged characters are also realistically portrayed, confident in their place in the school's social fabric or driven to insecurity by the lack of it. Anderson shines in her descriptions of high school, especially when she writes Melinda's running commentary on cheerleaders.

So much of high school involves attempting to fit in to a facet of its society.  Anderson illustrates this perfectly through several methods.  The high school changes mascots no fewer than three times during the school year.  Heather's overeager attempts to find the right extracurricular club.  Rachel's integration with the foreign exchange students as she tries on a variety of different identities under their influence.  Finally, there's Melinda -- standing on the edges of the social scene, belonging to none of the cliques, but surprising tendrils of what she could become poke through her psyche, offering glimpses of where she might fit.

Speak is rife with symbolism.  It's found in the theme of Melinda's English class. (The teacher loves teaching symbolism.)  It's found in the stuffed bunnies Melinda collects and the trees she doggedly attempts to draw.  The silent bunnies are Melinda's lost voice.  The endless pile of failed and more successful trees represent Melinda's struggle to come to grips with the rape.

Even the word rape itself comes laden with portent.  Melinda' can't even bring herself to admit it out loud, and the the first time she tells someone she was raped, she has to write it out.  Rape in of itself is a difficult topic.  It's a psychological and physical violation, and in Melinda's case has caused far more psychological damage than physical.  Until the moment Melinda sees the restroom walls covered with confirmations from other girls about the boy who raped her, she feels nobody will believe her.  Even more so, Melinda feels the less she speaks about the rape, the more she will forget what happened.

Anderson is careful to present Melinda's rape as an act of dominance.  There is nothing titillating about it.  It's about the rapist's ability to take advantage of a vulnerable situation, regardless of Melinda's repeated refusals.  Anderson treats Melinda's recovery from her assault in a mostly realistic fashion, showing the audience the depths of her PTSD following the rape.

Mandy Siegfried does an admirable job providing Melinda's voice in this audiobook.  Her voice perfectly captures the sardonic tones of Anderson's written narrative and credibly sounds like an average fourteen year-old girl.  The performance falters just a little at the end when Melinda begins to sound more hopeful in Anderson's narrative, but Siegfried's voice still carries the acerbic tones.  It doesn't quite suit the shift in the tone of Melinda's narration.

The unabridged audiobook is five hours long on four CDs.

Photo by: L. Propes

Speak offers schools a tool to begin discussions about sexual assault and rape.  It also allows them to discuss bullying in the context of the way Melinda is treated at the beginning of the novel.  Speak can also be used to open a dialogue about depression in teenagers and learning to handle the immense stress they often feel.  Anderson has stated in interviews that she's heard from hundreds of readers -- both male and female -- who have shared their experiences as a victim of sexual assault.  A poem at the beginning of the current print publication contains lines from letters and e-mails Anderson has received.  The last pages of the print publication also contains some chilling statistics regarding rape and sexual assault of girls, boys, men, and women.  Anderson includes several sources for help for rape victims as well.  Some websites offer alternative texts to use with anti-bullying here and here.  Readers might also want to read Leverage by Joshua C. Cohen, which also deals with bullying and rape, but from a far different perspective.

Speak turns fifteen this year.  You can read an interview with Anderson about it here.  RAINN (Rape, Abuse, & Incest National Network) and Anderson have teamed up to raise money for RAINN in honor of Sexual Assault Awareness & Prevention Month and Speak's fifteenth anniversary.

The websites Anderson lists at the back of the book are:

www.rainn.org (RAINN -- Rape, Abuse, & Incest National Network)
www.soar99.org (Speaking Out Against Rape)
www.nsvrc.org (National Sexual Violence Resource Center)
www.911rape.org (Rape Treatment Center)

Anderson also includes the number of the National Sexual Assault Hotline: 1-800-656-HOPE.

Anderson is the author of Wintergirls, The Impossible Knife of Memory, Fever 1793, Forge, Chains, Twisted, and Catalyst (which features a cameo of Melinda several months after the events of Speak).  Speak was a Printz Honor book and Chains won the 2009 Scott O'Dell award.  Speak and Chains were both National Book Award Finalists.  Anderson has also won the 2009 Margaret A. Edwards Award.

Students and teachers might want to have  a look at Anderson's blog Mad Woman in the Forest. The page for teachers includes information about how Anderson approaches writing and research.  She also has information about arranging a visit to the school via Skype.
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"Anderson's powerful debut YA novel... makes for a gripping, enlightening audiobook.  Ninth-grader Melinda Sordino begins her first year of high school as a veritable pariah.  Her friends have dropped her 'like a hot Pop-tart on a cold kitchen floor' as payback for her actions just days before... and Melinda is so traumatized, she cannot muster the voice to tell anyone; she pretty much stops speaking altogether.  Youthful actress Siegfried makes a believable teenage protagonist, effectively expressing Melinda's humorous sarcasm, wit, and pain." -- Publishers Weekly, 2000

"[Melinda's] early silence about an unspeakable act turns her toward harmful isolation and self-hatred... Her silence is almost palpable.  It stands between the adolescent girl and any useful, caring contact with those who inhabit her world of school and family... Anderson contrasts Melinda's awareness of and resistance to pressures to learn the correct, feminine, sanctioned ways of speaking with the behavior of her one friend, Heather, whose pathetic attempts to please and be attractive come at great personal cost." -- Sally Smith, Journal of Adolescent & Adult Literacy, 2000 

"Speak is the powerful story of the aftermath of rape, brought to life by narrator Siegfried, whose youthful-sounding voice is 'right on' in terms of inflection, pacing, and portrayal of teenage character Melinda's thoughts." -- Jean Hatfield, Booklist, 2001

"Melinda's voice is distinct, unusual, and very real as she recounts her past and present experiences in bitterly ironic, occasionally even amusing vignettes.  In her YA fiction debut, Anderson perfectly captures the harsh conformity of high-school cliques and one teen's struggle to find acceptance from her peers.  Melinda's sarcastic wit, honesty, and courage make her a memorable character." -- Debbie Carton, Booklist, 1999

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References

Anderson, Laurie Halse. 1999. Speak. New York: Square Fish. 

Carton, Debbie. 1999. Speak. 09/15; 2014/4, http://ezproxy.twu.edu:2216/ps/i.do?id=GALE%7CA56063651&v=2.1&u=txshracd2583&it=r&p=LitRC&sw=w&asid=69fcd4e212c077b9295fa3b54c424cc7.

Hatfield, Jean. 2001. Speak. 03/15; 2014/4, http://ezproxy.twu.edu:2216/ps/i.do?id=GALE%7CA73891032&v=2.1&u=txshracd2583&it=r&p=LitRC&sw=w&asid=950ff0b68eb36e9ae2f80fd256bfb85c.

Reviews: Spoken word. 2000. Publishers Weekly 247 (32) (08/07): 31, http://ezproxy.twu.edu:2048/login?url=http://ezproxy.twu.edu:2060/login.aspx?direct=true&db=a9h&AN=3441349&site=ehost-live&scope=site.

Smith, Sally. 2000. Speak (book review). Journal of Adolescent & Adult Literacy 43 (6) (03): 585, http://ezproxy.twu.edu:2048/login?url=http://ezproxy.twu.edu:2060/login.aspx?direct=true&db=a9h&AN=2864940&site=ehost-live&scope=site.