Speak, a 1999 National Book Award Finalist and recipient of numerous awards and honors, is a novel for young adults that tells the story of social outcast Melinda Sordino. Melinda begins her freshman year at Merryweather High with a terrible reputation after she called the cops at an end-of-summer party. Everyone hates her, including her former best friends. Once Melinda is finally able to admit to herself and others that she called the cops that night because she was raped by a popular upperclassman, she regains her self-worth and her ability to speak up for herself.
Speak was contemporary realistic fiction when it was released in 1999; although some of the technology and methods of...
