Speaking Loudly by Staying Mute
I picked up Laurie Halse Anderson's Speak at the Friends of the Library book sale over the holiday season (along with about 20 other waiting-to-be-explored worlds). I've been contemplating reading this book for a long time after discussing it with my dear friend, Ashley, who had this as part of her required curriculum while teaching at a high school in the area. I thought it sounded intriguing and horrific. Honestly, I was shocked that the school board had approved this book for the curriculum, while some ban such books as The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn , To Kill a Mockingbird , and Night (though, thankfully, not in Oregon). Speak is a book filled with so much silence that has never been so deafening and loud. Melinda, an incoming freshman, starts the year with zero friends and a terrible, debilitating secret...she was raped by an upperclassman over the summer. Everyone at school knows her as a narc for calling the police during a party and proceed...