10/09/2026
Today's A Mighty Girl Community Pick is in honor of Banned Books Week: "Speak" by Laurie Halse Anderson. On the last night of summer before her first year of high school, fourteen-year-old Melinda Sordino went to an older students' party in the woods and was r***d by an upperclassman named Andy Evans. Terrified, confused, and unable to describe what had just happened to her, Melinda called the police -- but when the officers arrived, she could not bring herself to tell them why. The call broke up the party, got dozens of her classmates in trouble, and marked Melinda, for the entire school year that followed, as the freshman who ratted. By the first day of ninth grade, her former best friends have cut her off, no one will sit with her at lunch, and Melinda has stopped speaking almost entirely.
Over the course of the school year, Melinda retreats further into her silence -- hiding during the day in a boarded-up janitor's closet, stopping speaking at the dinner table, barely participating in class -- and slowly, with the quiet encouragement of an art teacher who notices her, begins to find her way back to her own voice. Published in 1999, "Speak" was a finalist for the National Book Award, named a Michael L. Printz Honor Book, translated into thirty-five languages, and adapted into both a film starring Kristen Stewart and a graphic novel illustrated by Eisner Award winner Emily Carroll. It has also been one of the most relentlessly challenged books in American schools since the day it was published, banned over the years for its honest depiction of sexual assault, for Melinda's grief and anger, and for what one censor's complaint called a "bias against male students."
In the past school year, 27 years after it first appeared, "Speak" was the second-most-banned book in American schools, pulled from the shelves of 23 school districts in a year that broke every previous record for book banning. That it continues to be fought over is, in many ways, the clearest proof of how much it still matters -- for the teens who need to know they are not alone, and for the parents, teachers, and classmates who need to recognize what the Melindas in their own lives are trying to say. Highly recommended for ages 14 and up.
"Speak" is available at https://bookshop.org/a/8011/9781250302359 (Bookshop) and https://amzn.to/4hNDnff (Amazon)
For Laurie Halse Anderson's memoir in verse, written twenty years after "Speak" and bringing together her own story of childhood sexual assault, the long work of healing, and her years of reading letters from survivors who found their own voice through Melinda's, we recommend "SHOUT" for teens and adults at https://www.amightygirl.com/shout
For the Eisner Award-nominated graphic novel adaptation of "Speak," we recommend "Speak: The Graphic Novel" for ages 14 and up at https://www.amightygirl.com/speak-the-graphic-novel
If you know a teen girl struggling after sexual abuse or trauma, “The Sexual Trauma Workbook for Teen Girls: A Guide to Recovery from Sexual Assault and Abuse” may help at https://www.amightygirl.com/sexual-trauma-workbook-girls
For several powerful memoirs by young women who survived and courageous spoke out after sexual assault, we highly recommend "Know My Name: A Memoir" (https://www.amightygirl.com/know-my-name), "Notes on a Silencing: A Memoir" (https://www.amightygirl.com/notes-on-a-silencing), and "I Have The Right To" (https://www.amightygirl.com/i-have-the-right-to), recommended for older teens and adults
