Speak

Anderson, L.H. (1999).  Speak.  New York, NY:  Penguin.  At the beginning of school, Melinda Sordino is bullied by her peers.  She even has mash potatoes thrown at her on the first day of school.  Most students hate her because she called the police during a party held in a secret location and where booze is involved.  She loses all her friends and is not accepted in any of the cliques in school.  She is “clanless.”  In reality, Melinda had been raped by one of the jocks, Andy.  When she called the cops, she had changed her mind, but it was too late, and the party was broken up.  As the book advances, Melinda is having trouble holding her secret, especially when she sees her former best friend dating “Andy Beast.”  She tells her, but is not believed.  When Andy, starts touching Nicole the wrong way, she puts a stop to it.  Everyone now knows what he has done, so he decides to get back at Melinda by attacking her again.  This time Melinda yells and is rescued by the lacrosse team.  I think that this book should be read by middle school students and above.  It can teach them that if they are ever touched wrongly, they need to speak up and not keep it to themselves because that perpetrator could be hurting other people, too, as we found in the case of Andy.  I think this book could be a good companion to Lovely Bones by Alice Sebold.  In this book, we see the character of Andy as the stereotypical, all-American athlete.  He is supposed to be making all the right decisions, but it is discovered that he had been sexually harassing girls and knew they would not be believed because he was a jock.