Miss Bone
English 2 Period 2
14 December 2012
English Literature Data Sheet Quarter 2: Speak
Summary & Theme: The book Speak by Laurie Halse Anderson is about an incoming freshman named Melinda Sordino. She’s riding the bus to school but she doesn’t have any friends to sit with. While she’s looking over the crowd of kids on the bus she spots her ex best friend, Rachel, but even she mouths “I hate you.” After Melinda attends her first few classes she already hates high school. When she gets to Art class she is assigned a subject that she must turn into art for the rest of the year. Melinda receives the word “Tree” and doesn’t understand how to make that creative. She asked to switch but her teacher wouldn’t let her. Later on, she meets a girl named Heather in one of her classes, although they are completely different people, they start to hang out. Heather really wants to become popular and would like Melinda to help her. She couldn’t care less about popularity but continues to nod and agree with Heather. A couple weeks later, she discovers an old janitor closet that no one uses; she decides to make this her hideaway. She decorates it to her liking and sits in it when she needs some space. Due to Heather’s plot for popularity, Melinda finds herself caught up in helping her impress “The Marthas”, a clique Heather wants to become a part of. Soon enough, Heather tells Melinda that they can’t be friends anymore because they are too different and that she is really weird and depressed. For the first time, she actually wants to be friends with Heather; for Heather is the closest she has to a friend. Melinda starts to skip school more and more and her grades slip. Her parents are angry and disappointed, so they have a meeting with the principal. They try to get her to speak up about why she is acting out but she just stays silent. Her punishment is in school suspension; Andy Evans is there with her. All the memories from an incident in summer