SPEAK

l

Speak

Older students are allowed to roam until the bell, but ninth graders are herded into the auditorium. We all fall into clans: Jocks, Country Clubbers, Idiot Savants, Cheerleaders, Human Waste, Eurotrash, Future Fascists of America, Big

Hair Chix, the Marthas, Suffering Artists, Thespians, Goths, Shredders. I am clanless. I wasted the last weeks of August watching bad cartoons. I didn’t go to the mall, the lake, or the pool, or answer the phone. I have entered high school

with the wrong hair, the wrong clothes, the wrong attitude. And I don’t have anyone to sit with. [p. 4]

Mood

Exit Ticket

Have you ever felt like the speaker? Describe a time in your life when you could relate.

Journal

What type of tone does the speaker use here? How does her tone emphasize her sentiments towards high school?

Making Inferences

page 28

"My brother got arrested at that party...I can't believe you did that. Asshole."

You don't understand. My headvoice answers. Too bad she can't hear it. My throat squeezes shut, as if two hands of black fingernails are clamped on my windpipe. I have worked so hard to forget every second of that stupid party, and here I am in the middle of a hostile crowd that hates me for what I had to do. I can't wait to tell them what really happened. I can't even look at that part myself. An animal noise rustles in my stomach.

Review pages 16-17.

How does this description reveal Melinda's true feelings about herself? Cite details from the text to support your response.

SPEAK

Laurie Halse Anderson

Mood

Tone

• general atmosphere created by the author's words
• a feeling the READER gets from reading those words

- author's attitude toward

the writing (characters, the

situation) and the readers.

- tone is set by the setting, choice

of vocabulary and other details.

Making Inferences

I watch myself in the mirror across the room. Ugh. My hair is completely hidden under the comforter. I look for the shapes in my face. Could I put a face in my tree, like a dryad from Greek mythology? Two muddy-circle eyes under black-dash eyebrows, piggy-nose nostrils, and a chewed-up horror of a mouth. Definitely not a dryad face. I can't stop biting my lips. It looks like my mouth belongs to someone else, someone I don't even know.

I get out of bed and take down the mirror. I put it in the back of my closet, facing the wall.

pgs. 16-17