Speak

Imagine your first day of high school as a freshman; You're nervous, majority of the time you don’t really know what you’re doing, and you are really eager to find out if you have any friends in your classes. Well what if you didn’t have your friends? How would that make your day? Unfortunately for Melinda in the book Speak is the scenario. Young Melinda's life has changed since she went to that party over the summer. The author of this book made the book the way it was for different reasons.

One of the first decisions that the author made was making the main character a girl. You ask well why not a boy? That party over the summer that Melinda went to, is where it all begins. Most of the time in the real world girls are victims more than boys are; sadly but true that’s the case for Melinda. Since Melinda was the victim she happened to call the cops, and that’s the part where she doesn’t have any friends anymore. Making Melinda a girl also helped with how depressing the author wanted to make the book, because boys are known to be big dudes that never cry where as girls are sensitive, and very emotional. During art class in school, I look around and I see boys goofing around, and just doing enough to get the art project done; and then I look again and I see girls taking their time and expressing their emotions in the art work, which comes into the roll of Melinda drawing the tree in art class. For more than 70% of the time Melinda is depressed, she even said “I’d bet they’d be divorced now if I hadn’t been born”, referring to her parents fighting all the time. Now if it was a boy that was Melinda, it would be ohhhh big deal my parents are fighting. All and all if the main character wasn’t a girl the book wouldn’t be as depressing and as gloomy as it is, it definitely would not be the same story, that the author had chosen it to be.

Depression is the main mood of this book, even if it may not be to too many people’s liking. In fact, I believe this book should not be read until kids are past 8th grade for the following reason. Melinda was an average middle schooler, but since that party, where she was assaulted her life has been miserable; When you have 8th grade girls perhaps even boys read this book while they're in 8th grade it may creep them out a little a bit. Also the author does even a better job of making high school, sound like torture(not good), because the author revolves the book around one character; And sorry to say, makes it sound like that’s the way every high schooler’s life is going to be, which is far from the truth. Melinda is that one in every twenty students that has a bad high school life. Also the author does a superior job of making senior boys sound like big monsters that are predators to girls, and again, Andy Evans is every 1 in 20 boys that is like that. Last but not least she makes the principal sound like some lazy couch potato that doesn’t do anything, when in fact principals take great responsibility in their jobs and are always trying to improve their school.

The author Laurie Halse Anderson made it sound like your Freshman year in high school is one of the worst times of your life, when she is just giving a perspective of an oddball. All these reasons lead up to as why I don’t like the book, and that this book would be a waste of time for you to read if you’re not older than 8th grade.