At first glance, Laurie Halse Anderson's 1999 debut YA novel, Speak, seems to be your typical "freshman-adjusting-to-high-school" plot. However, readers quickly figure out that this is not the case and that protagonist Melinda Sordino has hidden secrets that readers and the people around her can't quite see. 
 The observant, ironic, hurting Melinda is the story's protagonist. She is the most dynamic character of the novel, with her survivor's journey the main focus of the book. Most of the other characters in the story are fairly static. For example, David Petrakis is the intelligent, justice-seeking, closest-to-friend-that-Melinda-has and he consistently stays that way throughout Speak. However, some side characters are slightly developed or changed during the course of the book. Ivy, who at the opening of the novel won't even look at Melinda (10), slowly begins to interact again with her former friend. She gives feedback on Melinda's art project on page 64 and when they run into each other at the mall, Ivy initiates a conversation and invites Melinda to draw with her (145). 
 I think the main theme of the novel comes from its title, Speak. Finding your voice and the courage to speak for yourself, is constantly illustrated by characters in the story such as David's debate and free speech debacle with Mr. Neck or Mr. Freeman's struggle with the school bureaucracy. One of my favorite quotes from David was to Melinda after her silent protest against orally presenting her suffragettes report for a grade: "Don't get me wrong. I think what you did was kind of cool and getting stuck in MISS wasn't fair. But don't expect to make a difference unless you speak up for yourself" (159). At the end of the novel, Melinda ultimately decides that her decision to be silent because of fear is no way to live. 
 Speak is written from a first person point of view. We're in the head, the mind, the thoughts of Melinda. For the most part, she chooses to physically speak as little as possible, so without the first person narrative, we'd be stuck scratching our heads as the other characters around Melinda are and might assume that she's a negative, withdrawn, "weird" person. Being able to follow her stream of conscious thought allows the reader to empathize with Melinda in an intimate way. 
 I had never seen anything close to Anderson's style of writing in the books I've read previously, so I found the unconventional chapters and formatting something of a novelty. For example, the book is roughly broken into four parts, one for each period of the school year. Within that are short chapter headings which perhaps would be better to call "vignettes" of Melinda's freshman year of high school. These vignettes seem to vary in length from about one page long to five or six. Another interesting choice of style is that the dialogue Melinda recounts is written in a "screenplay" style. For me, this especially emphasizes Melinda's "silences" by incorporating blank spaces. 
 For example, on page 61, "Dad: 'It's supposed to be soup.' Me: ." 
 I would describe the tone of the novel as honest or believable. Of course, we don't like to imagine that a high school freshman might go through something similar to Melinda, but there is an authenticity to her narrative voice and tone. Merryweather High and the relationships between teachers, students, and parents seem like they could be mirrored at nearly any high school across America. "Every year they say we're going to get right up to the present, but we always get stuck in the Industrial Revolution" (7). I'm sure I'm not the only one who can relate to *never* finishing history textbooks. 
 Because Anderson touches upon darker, more serious topics, her use of figurative language, metaphor, and humor allow the reader to smile a bit while in the mind of an outwardly apathetic teenage recluse. Melinda's sardonic sense of humor is revealed in her internal dialogue and thoughts as she observes the world around her. For example, this charming metaphor: "There is a sprinkling of losers like me scattered among the happy teenagers, prunes in the oatmeal of school" (128). Also, use of similes include: "Art follows lunch, like dream follows nightmare" (9) and my favorite, "Art without emotion is like chocolate cake without sugar. It makes you gag" (122). For a book about a withdrawn, depressed teenager, Speak has quite a few humorous quotables! 
 Sixteen years after being published, this "modern classic" has so far stood the test of time and has been showered with awards and accolades such as the SCBWI Golden Kite Award, a Publishers Weekly and a School Library Journal Best Book of the Year, ALA Top Ten Best Book for Young Adults, eight state book awards, etc.