Speak

Bibliography:

Anderson, Laurie Halse., and Mandy Siegffied. Speak. New York: Random House Audio/Listening Library, 2000. ISBN:  978-0312674397

Plot Summary:

      Melinda Sordino is a new high school freshman who finds herself dealing with issues that go beyond the standard issues a high school freshman deals with. Melinda's horror began at a party during the summer and she finds herself trying to find her way for the rest of the year.  She tries to make sense of friends that don't want anything to do with her and sense of what it means to have a friend at all.  

Critical Analysis:
 
     Melinda Sordino's life changed at a party the summer before her freshman year of high school.  Melinda narrates the story and it is a story that could occur in any present day high school.  Melinda is also easy to relate to and the she connects with the reader through her feelings of being alone, hating school, and walking the reader through her daily struggles with parents, friends and teachers.  
    When Melinda is raped by a boy at a party, she seems to lose her drive to communicate with people outside herself.  As the reader or in my case, the listener, it is odd to know Melinda's every thought yet those around her are clueless to the constant battle she is going through even just to remember to shower.  Her parents are frustrated with Melinda's choice not to talk and her dismal grades.  They are not sure how to handle her.  Melinda's situation begins to change when she decides to finally tell someone the truth.  
    She now feels stronger even though she did not receive the response she expected.  Melinda comes face to face with her rapist in a locked closet and this is where Malinda takes a turn from being a victim to someone who takes charge of their destiny and won't just sit back and let things happen to her.  Melinda fights for her life in that locked closet and comes out a winner!  She yells, and uses her wit to break a mirror that is hanging behind a poster of one of her heroines.  Her screams are heard by the lacrosse team and they try breaking into the closet.
      Melinda struggles all year to draw a tree for her art class.  I think the tree in this story represents her.  At the end of the story when she has come to terms with the fact that she has been raped by the monster, Andy Evans, she sits down one last time to try and draw her tree.  This time she draws her tree with all the emotion in her being.  Emotion she was trying to hide before and didn't want anyone to know about.  She draws a beautiful tree that has scars and unusual curves and deformed branches yet it also has beautiful branches and gorgeous leaves.  She turns in her tree and the art teacher sits beside her.  The art teacher has connected with her all year and it is only now that Malinda is wiling to share her deep dark secret.  The book ends with Malinda saying, "Let me tell you". This is symbolic because she essentially doesn't hardly speak throughout the whole book.   The reader sees Malinda move from a wounded victim with no support, to a victim overcoming a horrible situation by Speaking out.  I loved this book, but it is definitely one for older readers, late junior to high school. 
     Listening to the book was wonderful because I felt as if I was actually listening to Melinda her self.  There was no need to hear different voices in different characters because the whole story was told by Malinda.  Malinda did however offer some voice fluctuation when she was talking about Heather or her parents. The audio version helps the story flow very nicely and I highly recommend the audio accompany the book. 

Review Excerpt:

Common Sense Media reviews the book as follows:

     "This is one of the most devastatingly true and painful portrayals of high school to come along in a long time. The cliques, from the Jocks to the Big Hair Chix to the Marthas (devotees of a certain Ms. Stewart), are pigeonholed to perfection. Outsider Melinda seems somehow familiar, too. Her witty, ironic commentaries can't cover up her pain at being excluded.
      Kids who are genuine outsiders stand to gain a lot from this compassionate novel. The author offers real solutions to Melinda's pain: Melinda's connection to a mentor, her artistic creations, and even her plans for a flower garden all feed her inner strength. When she's finally able to speak, readers will rejoice in her triumphs."

Kirkus Reviews the book as follows:
"A frightening and sobering look at the cruelty and viciousness that pervade much of contemporary high school life, as real as today’s headlines. At the end of the summer before she enters high school, Melinda attends a party at which two bad things happen to her. She gets drunk, and she is raped. Shocked and scared, she calls the police, who break up the party and send everyone home. She tells no one of her rape, and the other students, even her best friends, turn against her for ruining their good time. By the time school starts, she is completely alone, and utterly desolate. She withdraws more and more into herself, rarely talking, cutting classes, ignoring assignments, and becoming more estranged daily from the world around her. Few people penetrate her shell; one of them is Mr. Freeman, her art teacher, who works with her to help her express what she has so deeply repressed. When the unthinkable happens—the same upperclassman who raped her at the party attacks her again’something within the new Melinda says no, and in repelling her attacker, she becomes whole again. The plot is gripping and the characters are powerfully drawn, but it is its raw and unvarnished look at the dynamics of the high school experience that makes this a novel that will be hard for readers to forget. (Fiction. 12+)"

Awards:

• 1999 National Book Award Finalist
• 1999 BCCB Blue Ribbon Book
• 2000 SCBWI Golden Kite Award for Fiction
• 2000 Horn Book Fanfare Best Book of the Year
• 2000 ALA Best Book for Young Adults
• 2000 Printz Honor Book
• 2000 Top Ten Best Books for Young Adults
• 2000 Fiction Quick Pick for Reluctant Youg Adult Readers
• 2000 Edgar Allen Poe Best Young Adult Award Finalist
• 2001 New York Times Paperback Children's Best Seller
• 2005 New York Times Paperback Children's Best Seller

Connections:

Author's Website:  http://madwomanintheforest.com/
Author's Blog: http://madwomanintheforest.com/blog/
Lesson Plan from Novelinks http://novelinks.org/pmwiki.php?n=Novels.Speak
Lesson Plan from the author's website: CLICK HERE
Lesson Plan:  http://mshogue.com/ce9/Speak/speak.htm

Other books by Laurie Halse-Anderson:

ISBN:  978-0689848919

ISBN:  978-1416905868

ISBN:  978-0142405703

After Tupac and D Foster

Bibliography:

Woodson, Jacqueline. After Tupac & D Foster.  Grand Haven, MI: Brilliance Audio, 2009.
ISBN: 9780399246548

Plot Summary:
       After Tupac & D Foster is a book that embodies the essence of friendship and what it means to have a true friend.  Three girls, Neeka, D Foster and the narrator, share three years together that bonds them tighter than any experience they could ever share.  They experience the issues that come with being 11 and blossoming into 13.  They lean on each other through family issues they experience and they find themselves clinging to each other during  times of loss as well. The girls love D Foster even though she is somewhat of a mystery to them and doesn't share much of her life.  The girls are deeply saddened when D moves back with her mother and their beloved Tupac is proclaimed dead.

Critical Analysis:
       I listened to the unabridged audio of After Tupac & D Foster.  The book was read by Susan Spain.  Spain did a wonderful job of identifying with each character being portrayed in the story.  I especially liked it when she would use the voice of John Jay.  Spain made it sound really deep compared to when she used the voice of Tash, Neeka's oldest brother.  Tash was a homosexual, but was very flamboyant and this was easily portrayed in listening to the book.  Spain made it easy to see Tash flipping his hair and his hands and bobbing his head when he was talking.
       I chose this book because I thought I would have a personal connection with the lives of these girls.  I too loved Tupac and remember when he was killed.  I however, did not absolutely identify with Tupac as did the Neeka, D and the narrator.  The girls reflected on Tupac surviving his first shooting and how everyone thought he was such a miracle.  D identified with Tupac's mommy issues and how he was strong and really wanted to empower those around him as well.  The girls also had dreams of marrying a gangster rapper that would buy them a house and take care of them someday.  Although I couldn't identify with these aspirations, I understood the pedestal they placed the famous singer.  
      There was not a major rise in action in this book.  There were no critical events that happened or changed the story until the very end when D Foster left Queens to live with her mother again and Tupac died.  These were major events in their lives and this is how they remember their time with D and listening to Tupac's music.  I really didn't like this book at all.  It was about regular life situations and how three girls dealt with them.  I did not find it interesting and frankly if it weren't for the book being on audio, I would have probably read a different book. I understand it is a Newberry Honor book, but it is not one I will be revisiting or recommending to young readers.

Review Excerpt:

Review by Booklist
“The summer before D Foster’s real mama came and took her away, Tupac wasn’t dead yet.” From this first line in her quiet, powerful novel, Woodson cycles backward through the events that lead to dual tragedies: a friend’s departure and a hero’s death. In a close-knit African American neighborhood in Queens, New York, the unnamed narrator lives across from her best friend, Neeka. Then D Foster wanders onto the block, and the three 11-year-old girls quickly become inseparable. Because readers know from the start where the plot is headed, the characters and the community form the focus here. A subplot about Neeka’s older brother, a gay man serving prison time after being framed for a hate crime, sometimes threatens to overwhelm the girls’ story. But Woodson balances the plotlines with subtle details, authentic language, and rich development. Beautifully capturing the girls’ passage from childhood to adolescence, this is a memorable, affecting novel about the sustaining power of love and friendship and each girl’s developing faith in her own “Big Purpose.” Grades 6-9. --Gillian Engberg 

Awards:

Newberry Honor Book

Connections:

Author's Website:  CLICK HERE
Lesson Plan for book:  CLICK HERE
Interview with author:  CLICK HERE

Other books byJaqueline Woodson

ISBN:  978-0142417065

ISBN: 978-0142415535

ISBN:  978-0399239878

Lunch Lady

Bibliography:

Krosoczka, Jarrett. Lunch Lady and the League of Librarians. New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 2009.  ISBN:  9780329714543

Plot Summary:

     This graphic novel written by Jarreett Krosoczka is one that will keep students guessing when it comes to unfolding the evil plan of the local librarians.  The children in the story are really looking forward to the unveiling of X-Station 5000.  The librarians have other plans when it comes to the X-Station 5000.  This novel is a laugh out loud read and the super heroes arrive in the most unlikely form with the most unlikely of gadgets to assist them in their efforts to uncover the librarians' plans for world domination.  

Critical Analysis:
     In the graphic novel Lunch Ladies and the League of Librarians, Krosoczka does a wonderful job of hooking the readers from the very beginning of the story.  League of Librarians is the second book in the Lunch Lady series.  The storyline gravitates around three students, the Breakfast Bunch, that are discovering some curious things going on in the library with the librarians. Their school book fair is about to start and the students are excited about the "Read-a-thon" competition that is soon to be starting. 
   Little do the students know that the Lunch Ladies have been watching the librarians very closely as well and they are very close to figuring out their plans.  The Breakfast Bunch is parallel to a sidekick role while the lunch ladies follow the stereotypical role of super heroes.  They are everyday people in an everyday familiar work environment that when their skills are needed to fight evil, they come to the rescue.  The book follows a traditional sequence of events with super heroes stories.  The super heroes and their sidekicks become aware of some evil plans put together by the villainous librarians and work together to make sure their plan does not succeed.  
    The illustrations for League of Librarians are in black and white with accents of yellow.  Yellow is present in each picture it is important for the author to point out a detail of that particular scene and different shades of yellow is sometimes used as background color. When the Breakfast Bunch goes back to the library to find the keys one of them dropped, the scene is done in black and white and the missing keys are yellow on the floor of the library.  When one of the librarians yelled at the kids telling them, "The library is CLOSED!" the students were accented in yellow, but the librarian took-up almost the whole page and had bright yellow sunbursts shooting out from behind her.  It showed the reader that the librarian was mean and the children were cowering below her and afraid of her because they appear small in this scene and fear is expressed on their faces.  Using just black, white and yellow in Krosoczka's Lunch Lady series provides the reader with an opportunity to see what the author wants the reader to notice in each scene of this graphic novel.  It is well thought out and is a book that all students will enjoy. 

Review Excerpt:

From School Library Journal

Grade 3-5–When not serving up French fries and gravy to students, Lunch Lady escapes to her secret kitchen lair to lead the life of a crime fighter. Using an assortment of lunch-themed gadgets (created by her sidekick Betty), she is definitely a quirky superhero. Tipped off by the Breakfast Bunch (three students who discovered Lunch Lady's crime-fighting alter ego in Book 1), she attempts to foil the plans of the evil League of Librarians, who seek to destroy all video games. The black-and-white pen-and-ink illustrations have splashes of yellow in nearly every panel. The clean layout, featuring lots of open space, is well suited for the intended audience. Terrence, Hector, and Dee become more developed in this second installment in the series, especially Dee, who asserts herself as the strong-willed leader of the group. The winking references to book fairs, read-a-thon enrollment, and media specialists fit well with the story line. With its appealing mix of action and humor, this clever, entertaining addition to the series should have wide appeal.–Travis Jonker, Dorr Elementary School, MI END

Awards:

Cooperative Children's Book Center Choices - 2010

Connections:

Lesson idea:  This book would be great to use as an introduction into reading graphic novels.  Teachers and librarians can use the book as a read aloud and take the students panel by panel through the book.  This book also offers teachers and librarians an opportunity to show how authors connect with other books.  League of Librarians has a connection to some characters from classic literature that all students should be familiar with.  Students could write their own stories using characters from stories they are familiar with or are their favorite stories.
Author's Website:  CLICK HERE 
Author's Blog:  CLICK HERE
Lunch Lady Series Website:  CLICK HERE


Other books by Jarrett Krosoczka 

ISBN:  978-0375870354

ISBN:  978-0375860959