Speak By Laurie Halse Anderson
Fiction
Melinda starts her school year as
an outcast. Her infamous past has spread quickly throughout the school, giving
her the reputation of “the girl who called the cops on the last party of the
summer”. Melinda can’t escape what she did, and she can’t forget what caused
her to do it. She pushes the memory to the back of her mind and tries to ignore
it, but she finds that nearly impossible. The longer Melinda tries to hide what happened
to her at the party, the harder it becomes. Soon she retreats into her mind,
withdrawing from everyone and refusing to speak, but she realizes that the
charade she is playing can’t continue for much longer. She will have to
confront the truth of what happened on the night of the party.
The only class that Melinda likes
is art. Her teacher, Mr. Freeman begins the year by having everyone pick a
piece of paper out of a hat. The paper that they will pick out has the name of
a single object written on it. That object will then be expressed in as many
types of media as possible, as a sculpture, a painting, a sketch, or a digital
representation, anything that comes to mind. Melinda picks the “tree”, the
symbol of growth. Trees are a recurring symbol throughout the book. Although
Melinda originally believes that trees will be easy to draw, she finds it
difficult to draw one with emotion because she keeps on making mistakes. Later
she learns she can’t hide her mistakes by erasing them, but that she must keep
them to give the tree emotion. The last
tree she makes is real. It is broken and sick in some places, but it is healing
and growing in others. What happened to her cannot be hidden or avoided,
instead Melinda must pick up the pieces of her broken self and use the pieces
to continue to grow.
