While browsing The Open Book looking for an unsuspecting read, this book ended up in my hands. Outsider. Quiet. Disengaged. And an unknown trigger. 

I did not expect to end up feeling connected to this freshman girl. For starters, I’m a boy and I’m a rule follower. Melinda is neither.

What I didn't expect to experience as I turned the final few pages is an ending that had me picturing the walk down my own high school hallway, peering into the art class rooms dreaming of being accepted and welcomed. 

Written by American author, Laurie Halse Anderson, Speak is written like a journal of a freshman high schooler, Melinda. It reads like part-diary and part-monologue. We know early on that something is amiss; and more than stereotypical young girl angst. 

It is deeper. And more complex. 

How Melinda maneuvers her freshman year of high school is not out of the ordinary. She doesn't fit in. Her middle school friends have left her behind. When she does try to make new friends they only stick around for a few weeks and then they fizzle out. 

I was there too. I had the same lunch room experiences (minus the flung mashed potatoes) and the same hallway whispers. 

Slowly she finds that a safe space does exist on campus: the art room with Mr. Freeman. He pushes her right up to the edge and then pulls back. 

I had a few great teachers, but none that pushed me the way he did her. But I also didn't rebel or experience what Melinda did. I would have never in a million years cut class and gone to the mall.

Like her, I was harassed. I was bullied. I was sexually harassed. And I, too, trudged through it. One day, one step at a time. My escape was the library. I was there nearly every day. I made friends with the library staff. I did my homework quietly and alone.

Melinda went to the art studio. 

As I finished this book, nearly three decades after starting high school, I held back tears thinking about how we both survived. 

It is no surprise that I ended up loving books. They had been my safe space, my refuge, the world I wanted to live in. 

"Sometimes I think high school is one long hazing activity: if you are tough enough to survive this, they'll let you become an adult. I hope it's worth it."

Anderson weaved this emotionally creative story to an end we have all experienced: The customary yearbook signing week. 

Her art teacher asks a key question that we should all ask, "Why not spend that time on art: painting, sculpting, charcoal, paste, oils? Are words or numbers more important than images? Who decided this? Does algebra move you to tears"? 

Yearbooks complete, school is out, and a chance to begin again.

Want to read it for yourself? Pick up your copy of Speak by Laurie Halse Anderson. Prefer to purchase from Amazon?

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