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Criswell, Mandy (Summer 2002). "Pennsylvania Author: Anderson, Laurie Halse". Pennsylvania Center for the Book (pabook.libraries.psu.edu). Archived from the original on May 15, 2013 . Retrieved April 23, 2012. Melinda is befriended by Heather, a girl from Ohio who is new to the community. However, once Heather realizes that Melinda is an outcast, she abandons her in favor of the "Marthas," a group of girls who seem charitable and outgoing but are actually selfish and cruel. As Melinda's depression worsens, she begins to skip school, withdrawing from her already distant (and somewhat neglectful) parents and other authority figures, who see her reclusiveness as a cry for attention. She slowly befriends her lab partner, David Petrakis, who encourages her to speak up for herself. Thwap! A lump of potatoes and gravy hits me square in the center of my chest. All conversation stops as the entire lunchroom gawks, my face burning into their retinas. I will be forever known as "that girl who got nailed by potatoes the first day." The Basketball Pole apologizes and says something else, but four hundred people explode in laughter and I can't read lips. I ditch my tray and bolt for the door. Heather hops on the treadmill and resumes scheming. She isn't finished with her survey of Merryweather's social scene, but she thinks the International Club and the Select Chorus will be a good place to start. Maybe we can try out for the musical. I turn on the television and eat her popcorn.I tell Heather she should push the fashion envelope just a teeny bit to be an ironic reflection of the 1950s, you know, innocence and apple pie. She doesn't think the Clan Leaders, Meg ‘n' Emily ‘n' Siobhan, understand irony. They like rules too much. Over the course of the school year, the story of Melinda's past unfolds. She begins to admit to herself what happened and gradually stops running away from the memory of it. She still, however, remains silent. In the spring, her former best friend, Rachel, begins to date Andy Evans. Horrified by this, Melinda knows that she must warn Rachel about the danger of spending time with Andy. Melinda opens up to Rachel about the rape by exchanging notes with her in the library. Rachel is receptive until Melinda names Andy the perpetrator, at which point she angrily leaves the room. However, Rachel does, in fact, listen to Melinda's story. The next weekend, she publicly leaves and humiliates Andy at the prom. School starts and Melinda struggles with her tree. She helps Heather with a Martha poster project, and faints during a frog dissection in biology (after identifying with the dead frog). Heather, having been hired as a model, asks Melinda to hang posters; as she does, Melinda encounters IT, who whispers “Freshmeat” in her ear as she stands frozen.

She arrives friendless on her first day of ninth grade and receives angry glares from strangers. She decides that speaking only hurts her, and remains mostly silent. Melinda slips into depression and her grades suffer. She finds an abandoned janitor's closet and makes it her sanctuary. Hairwoman wastes twenty minutes taking attendance because she won't look at us. She keeps her head bent over her desk so the hair flops in front of her face. She spends the rest of class writing on the board and speaking to the flag about our required reading. She wants us to write in our class journals every day, but promises not to read them. I write about how weird she is. Laurie Beth Halse was born October 23, 1961, [3] to Rev. Frank A. Halse Jr. and Joyce Holcomb Halse in Potsdam, New York. She grew up there with her younger sister, Lisa. As a student, she showed an early interest in writing, specifically during the second grade. Anderson enjoyed reading—especially science fiction and fantasy—as a teenager, but never envisioned herself becoming a writer. [4] I want to wrap Melinda in a big, fresh out of the dryer blanket & spoon feed her chocolate ice cream while we watch The Princess Bride because she needs a friend who would do that for her!! It happened. There is no avoiding it, no forgetting. No running away, or flying, or burying, or hiding.”After watching arborists prune a tree in her yard, Melinda goes to visit the place where she was raped; in the quiet grove, she vows to nurture her old self like a seed, hoping that she will soon be able to grow once again. She spends a night with her parents without fighting, and then finds out that Rachel broke up with Andy at prom. Melinda is ecstatic, and decides that she doesn’t need to spend time in her closet anymore. I hear Dad turn on the television. Clink, clink, clink—he drops ice cubes in a heavy-bottomed glass and pours in some booze. He opens the microwave—for the pizza, I guess—slams it closed, then beep-beeps the timer. I turn on my radio so he'll know I'm home. I won't take a real nap. I have this halfway place, a rest stop on the road to sleep, where I can stay for hours. I don't even need to close my eyes, just stay safe under the covers and breathe. I've been writing poetry since I was a little girl. ... When you're talking about a marrow experience — like an experience that touches your bone marrow — you want to use the strongest platform you can, and for me, that was poetry. ... Not only is the Homecoming pep rally going to spring me from algebra, it will be a great time to clean up my closet. I brought some sponges from home. No need to goof off in filth. I want to smuggle in a blanket and some potpourri, too.

My brain doesn't think we should spend any time hanging around algebra. We have better things to think about. It's a shame. Mr. Stetman seems like a nice guy.If ever a story seemed destined to become a graphic novel, it’s Speak, which I finally read for the first time less than two months ago, and it was everything! I feared I’d Humpty Dumpty while reading Speak, which is why it took so long for me to gather the courage to finally begin reading it. I wish I’d had a Speak to tell me I wasn’t alone when I was Melinda’s age. The graphic novel format is right for this book because 1) for much of the book, Melinda is essentially silent, so Carroll's/Melinda's visual images speak for her in the absence of words, and 2) Melinda's salvation happens through Mr. Freeman's art class, and 3) Carroll knows horror, and the real-life, inexpressible horror that Melinda experiences and struggles to articulate is assisted so well by a horror-maven to tell her story. It is the most hopeless idea I have ever heard, but I nod and pour the remover on the carpet. It lightens the polish to a bright vomit green and bleaches the carpet surrounding it. When Heather sees what I have done, she bursts into tears again, sobbing that it isn't my fault. My stomach is killing me. Her room isn't big enough for this much emotion. I leave without saying goodbye. Melinda is an outcast at her high school. She has no friends until she meets the new girl from Ohio, Heather, and they sort of become friends. Melinda doesn't really speak to anyone including her parents. She's the only child. Her grades are deteriorating except for art. She likes art and is trying to draw the perfect tree. Because of Melinda’s artwork and art as a metaphor, SPEAK transfers seamlessly to a graphic novel. Emily Carroll’s illustrations brought the characters to life. I’ve seen the movie, listened to the audio and read the book countless times, so Carroll’s drawings could have felt “wrong” if she hadn’t imagined the people as Anderson depicted them. Carroll’s Melinda looked different than Kristen Steward in the movie and seemed different than the reader in the audio version, but she **was** just as much Melinda.