Melinda Sordino hasn’t uttered a word in weeks. But given that she has no friends at school, no one seems to mind. The reason for her silence and her ostracism is something she’s still struggling to make sense of: at a big party over the summer, Melinda, preparing to start her first year of high school, was raped by a rising senior. She called the police and broke up the party, getting everyone in trouble, but none of her peers know why—a tension she describes in gutting first-person narration. In her 1999 novel Speak, Laurie Halse Anderson creates a raw, realistic and unforgettable narrator to tell a timeless story of survival. Before the rise of the MeToo movement, before Emma Sulkowicz carried a dorm-room mattress around Columbia, before Christine Blasey Ford and Chanel Miller testified—before young survivors had dozens of powerful, real-life examples to look to—there was Anderson and her urgent novel. A revered author of YA, Anderson drew on personal experience to offer an entry point for young readers and the adults who care about them to start talking about the importance of boundaries, respect for others and the power of speaking up. Speak, which has won numerous awards and sold more than 3 million copies around the world, is a young-adult classic—and an essential book for readers of all ages. —Lucy Feldman
Buy Now: Speak on Bookshop | Amazon
- Here's Where All The Strongest Hurricanes Have Hit the U.S. in the Past 50 Years
- 2022 Time100 NEXT: TIME’s List Of Emerging Leaders Who Are Shaping the Future
- Industrial Farming Causes Climate Change. The ‘Slow Food’ Movement Wants to Stop It
- Here Are the 12 New Books You Should Read in October
- Artist Oliver Jeffers Wants to Paint the World Out of a Corner
- A Vibrant North Korean Community in London Finds Its Days Are Numbered
- COVID-19 Vaccines Can Make Periods Longer, Study Says
- Column: What Happened When My Entire Family Came Out
