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Gr 8 Up—Novelist Anderson has terrified adults and earned nods of recognition from teenagers with her unflinching portrayals of sexual assault, eating disorders, and self-harm. With this searing memoir in verse, she revisits the trauma that sliced through her and her family: the father shattered by memories of serving in World War II, the mother worn down by picking up the pieces, and the rape that buried teenage Laurie in a deep depression and ...Log In or Sign Up to Read More

"This is the story of a girl who lost her voice and wrote herself a new one." So opens Anderson's three-part autobiographical collection of dynamic, mostly free-verse poems that serves as a potent poetic endnote for her landmark novel Speak (rev. 9/99). In the first third, she recounts the painful origin story of her alcoholic parents ("two ships ripped from their moorings"), a confusing childhood full of frequent moves, and the harrowing rape, when she was thirteen, that was the basis for Spea...Log In or Sign Up to Read More