Reddit mentions of Speak

Stoner and Spaz

Speak

Not quite sure if these are exactly what you are looking for, but they were awesome reads. They are also YA, I know some have a stigma against YA books sometimes.

Speak by Laurie Halse Anderson is a great book for 8th graders! It's about a girl who gets sexually assaulted before the school year begins and her coming to terms with it.

Also The Giver is one of my favorite books of all time. You could definitely tie discussions of race/class with the story.

Perhaps Speak by Laurie Halse Anderson?

Okay so, YA books are my jam, and I'll get to those in a second. But if you want a fun summer read you'll have trouble putting down, Mr. Penumbra's 24-Hour Bookstore is great. It's a really fun read, especially for people who like books. It's got mystery, humor, and you'll stay up way too late reading to figure out what's going to happen next. It's not the deepest or most challenging book in the world, but it's real fun and well paced.

For YA, anything by Laurie Halse-Anderson is amazing. I've read Speak more times than any other book. Her book Catalyst is also really awesome. And I just finished her book Twisted a few days ago, and it was a great, quick read. (I actually finished it in one lazy day!)

Jay Asher's Thirteen Reasons Why is heartbreaking. If you liked Fault in Our Stars, I'm sure you'll love this. It's a great concept (girl who kills herself gives a series of tapes to a boy to explain why she did it), and it's just superbly well written. Along the same lines, Markus Zusak's I am the Messenger is also a great high-concept, all-the-feels read.

If you like the more fantasy-esque YA books, the best series I've found is Clive Barker's Abarat series. If you end up getting these, make sure to get the hardcover versions. The writing is great itself, but what really makes the series is that each book has over 300 paintings and illustrations done by the author himself. It's a great epic, and the third book of five just came out last year. The series gets darker as it goes, which is great.

And, finally, not a YA novel, but Adam Rapp's The Metal Children is an awesome play about a guy who wrote a YA book that's the focus of a censorship argument in a small town. It's got some great points in it, and is a fast, fun read.

Hope this helps! Sorry if I used the word 'great' too much. :P

Oh! I love reading books!

The last one I finished was Speak I just read it like last week.

I'm also currently reading American Gods But I'm reading that with a friend at a rate of 2 chapters a week, so I'm reading other books at the same time.

I'm about to start Godless Which I just got in the mail yesterday.


How about you? What was the last physical book you read?

Have you read Speak?
Or Everyday? (it's a little out there, but touches on several aspects of teen life, I think)
or Just Listen?
I recently finished Mud Girl, it was a good read but nothing groundbreaking.


I'm currently reading The Dream Thieves and Alas, Babylon.