"I found myself... having to take out one ear bud because it hurt to listen. Not a physical hurt, but an emotional and mental hurt." — Miss Remmers
Release Date: October 1999
Publisher: Puffin
Challenges: Audiobook Challenge, YA List Challenge, Off the Shelf, 100+ Reading Challenge
"When Melinda Sordino's friends discover she called the police to quiet a party, they ostracize her, turning her into an outcast — even among kids she barely knows. But even worse than the harsh conformity of high-school cliques is a secret that you have to hide."
"Speak" has been on my list of things I MUST read for about two years. I finally got around to listening to it.
You undoubtedly remember the discussion last year about "Speak" being a banned book. You know how supposedly powerful it is and how everyone loves it. Well, if I could say any ONE thing about this book that you may not have heard before it would be this: the audiobook's narrator is absolutely fantastic and listening to this novel may even be more powerful than reading it.
I'm not kidding, unlike "The Maze Runner" where the audiobook hindered my enjoyment of the book, this audiobook was amazing. The narrator was absolutely brilliant — so honest, innocent, sarcastic, and believable! I felt like I knew her! The narrator's voice with Halse Anderson's words put such emotion into me!
For instance, several times (not just once) I found myself walking the dog and listening and having to take out one ear bud (I know this sounds crazy) because it hurt to listen. Not a physical hurt, but an emotional and mental hurt. There was even a moment when I was walking and listening and it was rather late at night (around midnight) and at that point in the novel I was actually looking behind me to make sure no one was there! It's been weeks since I've finished this book and that suspicion is still there — the fear!
Besides a fantastic story that was so well written and articulated, this book (and more specifically this audiobook) is the perfect example of VOICE for students. My school district employs the 6+1 writing traits and one of the traits is VOICE. Voice is incredibly hard to teach because 1) it's hard to find and 2) it's hard to do! In the coming weeks as my students get comfortable with their routines and we begin discussing the 6+1 traits, I will be using "Speak" in the classroom to discuss the immense power of VOICE — something Laurie Halse Anderson seems to be an expert at.
-Visit Laurie around the web here: Website | Blog | Goodreads | Twitter
-BUY THE BOOK: Amazon | Kindle | Barnes and Noble | Nook
To the FTC, with love: Library Loan Audiobook