Speak

The book I chose to write about is Speak. It is a book that we’ll read in 8th grade but I read it before. It is a very good but sad book but it helps you look at things in a different way. The book is very confusing but it’s also a movie and you might know somebody who has had this happen to them like I have.

The story is about a teenage girl who was raped at a party. I’m not going to give you a description of the book because I think you might already know what it is about. I think many teenagers who have gone through things like this would know how it feels. The girls name is Melinda Sordino. Melinda was raped at an end of the year party right before she starts high school. You can tell already that she was very young and had no control over what had happened and didn’t deserve this. Throughout the story we hear Melinda’s thoughts and how she has lost her voice and cannot speak hence the title Speak. She has lost her voice not literally but figuratively and has no friends to help her get through this. When she was at the party after she was raped she calls the cops but nobody knows why so everyone at that party hates her even her best friend. She refers to the guy that raped her as “IT.” “IT’s” real name is Andy Evans who is dating Melinda’s ex best friend. She makes one friend named Dave Petrakis who you can tell likes her but she doesn’t realize it. Her other best friend would be her art teacher Mr. Freeman who gave her a yearlong project to create as many art pieces as she can that has to do with trees. She never told anyone about what happened the night of the party. Her parents don’t know and so when she doesn’t speak and isn’t the same anymore they think something is wrong with her so they take her to a “shrink.” At the end she finally tells someone.

They made the book into a movie in 2004. The movie followed the plotline of the story very well. The book was very much like movie. Melinda Sordino is played by Kristen Stewart. There are some parts that are different in the book than the movie but aren’t there in every movie that’s a book. Many of the parts are just like the ones in the book. I don’t like when they turn a book into a movie and it nothing like the book. Like how they made Twilight and New Moon, they were nothing like the books were.

I know that hundreds of teens go through stuff like this every day. I had a friend Justin that had this happen to him a few years before I met him and he said it was hard to get through at first but he did get through it. He said that he got through it by having friends there for him and his family there. They finally caught the guy who did this and he was put in jail. Justin told me that he was so relieved when the guy was put away so nobody would have to go through what he had to.

This book has changed my perspective on things like this that happen in the world. Back in the old days things like this happened but people didn’t do as much about it as they do know. The movie was just as good as the book and my friend Justin liked it too.