She pretends to like it that way, but secretly she feels broken. Abandoned by her former friends because they think she called the cops to the party for no reason, Melinda walks the halls of Merryweather High alone. Melinda’s initial coping strategy after this trauma is to withdraw and stop talking any more than is absolutely necessary. We don’t learn this right away, of course, although anyone who is paying attention will connect the dots fairly soon. Speak is Melinda’s first-person journey through depression and self-loathing after she was raped at a party the summer before Grade 9. Trigger warnings include discussion of rape and at least one scene with some racism. Yet I’m older than her now, when I read it. So I was younger than Melinda when this book first came out, and the high school setting actually predates my own high school experience. Speak was originally published in 1999, when I was ten years old. I read a lot of contemporary YA, so I’m used to feeling a lot older than the characters. Reading this book was a surreal experience in a few ways.
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Make proportional investments in prevention at all five levels of the hierarchy.
He expresses his joyousness in a way which could only be classified as child-like. Repeatedly he begins his days with the phrase “and another glorious day” amazed by every moment, no matter sun or storm, he finds peace and wonderment in nature. As his devotion for beauty grew so did his desire to help it flourish, and eventually he did just that. By the end of the book it becomes obvious that he would devote his life to what he had experienced. He becomes protective of the natural beauty that surrounds him and finds it puzzling and frustrating that something so beautiful would be destroyed and replaced with cement. Developing deeper connections and stronger bonds. He grows more and more connected to his surroundings as the book progresses. This specific description serves to bring to mind a well known disliked organism and therefore successfully personifying the sheep as a vessel for his hatred for the destruction of nature. He refers to the sheep he heads as “hoofed locusts”, relating them to pests due to the damages they cause to the ecosystem with their feet. Instead he writes pages distributing what are thought to be inerrantly human adjectives to flowers, plants, and small critters. Upon his arrival he was taken aback by the insincerity of the people he comes across, it is clear that he much prefers the company of plants and wildlife to that of humans so much so that he spends little time mentioning the people he encounters on his journey. The only times when she looks young is when her daughters die, but eventually, after getting pregnant with them again and giving birth she starts aging again. Elderly Immortal: She has lived for more than five thousand years, but she will always look like a woman in her sixties.Joanna is a very kind and peaceful woman, but she is not afraid to get involved in a good fight she battled her sister for the soul of Lionel Horning and won with a powerful light spell.Action Mom: When a supernatural enemy unleashes it's evil all over the town and threates to hurt her and her loved ones, Joanna decides to face it with her magic wand and the powers that she haven't used in a long time due to a restriction imposed to those like her centuries ago.Appears In: Witches of East End, Serpent's Kiss, Winds of Salem and indirectly in Triple Moon and Double Eclipse. |