Jungle Rumble

 Anderson, Laurie Halse.  Twisted.  New York, NY:  Viking, 2007. 

Anderson, Laurie Halse.  Speak.  New York, NY: Farrar, Straus Giroux, 1999.

I’ve just came off a Laurie Halse Anderson book binge.  I read Speak and Twisted back to back and loved both of them.  She ability to capture the angst and longing for belong is stunning.  I’m years (and years) out of high school, but her writing (for better or worse) took me right back.

Speak is the story of Melinda’s freshman year of high school.  The summer before she starts school she experiences a traumatic event which polarizes her from her friends and family.  She literally cannot “speak” of the event and flounders her way through high school.  Melinda’s only bright spot is art class.  Her assignment for the year is to create a tree.  The tree can be drawn, painted, sculpted, etc.  Melinda and her tree are intertwined.  Both cast off layers during the fall (tree=leaves and Melinda=friends and family), hibernate during winter and grow stronger and blossom in the spring as Melinda finds her voice.

Twisted is in the same vein as Speak.  Tyler Miller spent his summer manual labor in order to complete his court ordered community service for vandalizing the school.  He has gone from nerdy, whimp to tall, dark and “dangerous”.  As he starts school, Tyler settles into his new persona and catches to eye of a popular girl.  Swirling all around him are those who don’t accept the more confident Tyler including his father.  When Tyler’s life begins to go downhill, he must decide between continuing his transformation or his self-destructive thoughts.

The books’ undertones of being an outsider and finding one’s own place in society will resonate with anyone who attends or surived high school.