Skip to footer

Laurie Halse Anderson's 'Speak' will be adapted as a graphic novel

'Speak' was a finalist for the National Book Award for Young People's Literature.

'Speak' by Laurie Halse Anderson centers on a girl named Melinda who is raped and shies away from speaking after her ordeal, focusing instead on her artwork.
  • By Molly Driscoll Staff Writer

Laurie Halse Anderson’s novel “Speak” will be adapted into a graphic novel, scheduled for release in fall 2016.

Anderson will adapt “Speak” for the new format, with illustrations to be handled by Emily Carroll.

“Speak” centers on a girl named Melinda who is raped and shies away from speaking after her ordeal, focusing instead on her artwork. The novel was originally published in 1999 and was a National Book Award finalist in the Young People's Literature category. It was adapted into a film starring Kristen Stewart as Melinda which aired on Showtime and Lifetime in 2004.

“I have wanted to do a graphic novel of Speak for some time,” Anderson told Publishers Weekly of the new project. “Once I saw how graphic novels were becoming so popular, and given that Melinda finds her voice through her art, it’s the perfect YA novel to be told in this format.”

Anderson said of adapting the novel that “the fun part with this adaptation is figuring out how few words I can get away with. Some of my favorite moments in the novel are those when Melinda can’t speak because she is so hampered by her depression and the hard things that have happened to her. Now I’ll get the chance to turn that over to Emily, who gets to show readers how those silent moments look and feel. It will be exciting to see her artistic interpretation.”

Meanwhile, Carroll said she feels the challenge of adapting such an acclaimed novel.

“The novel has meant so much to so many people since its release that it’s a lot to live up to,” she told Publishers Weekly. “Balancing how Melinda sees the world with the actual world itself is a lot to keep in mind when you're translating that internal struggle to visuals.”

The graphic novel will be published by Farrar, Straus and Giroux.

You've read  of  free articles. Subscribe to continue.
Real news can be honest, hopeful, credible, constructive.
What is the Monitor difference? Tackling the tough headlines – with humanity. Listening to sources – with respect. Seeing the story that others are missing by reporting what so often gets overlooked: the values that connect us. That’s Monitor reporting – news that changes how you see the world.
editor@csmonitor.com
Subscribe
Mark Sappenfield
Editor

Dear Reader,

About a year ago, I happened upon this statement about the Monitor in the Harvard Business Review – under the charming heading of “do things that don’t interest you”:

“Many things that end up” being meaningful, writes social scientist Joseph Grenny, “have come from conference workshops, articles, or online videos that began as a chore and ended with an insight. My work in Kenya, for example, was heavily influenced by a Christian Science Monitor article I had forced myself to read 10 years earlier. Sometimes, we call things ‘boring’ simply because they lie outside the box we are currently in.”

If you were to come up with a punchline to a joke about the Monitor, that would probably be it. We’re seen as being global, fair, insightful, and perhaps a bit too earnest. We’re the bran muffin of journalism.

But you know what? We change lives. And I’m going to argue that we change lives precisely because we force open that too-small box that most human beings think they live in.

The Monitor is a peculiar little publication that’s hard for the world to figure out. We’re run by a church, but we’re not only for church members and we’re not about converting people. We’re known as being fair even as the world becomes as polarized as at any time since the newspaper’s founding in 1908.

We have a mission beyond circulation, we want to bridge divides. We’re about kicking down the door of thought everywhere and saying, “You are bigger and more capable than you realize. And we can prove it.”

If you’re looking for bran muffin journalism, you can subscribe to the Monitor for $15. You’ll get the Monitor Weekly magazine, the Monitor Daily email, and unlimited access to CSMonitor.com.

Subscribe to insightful journalism

QR Code to Laurie Halse Anderson's 'Speak' will be adapted as a graphic novel
Read this article in
https://www.csmonitor.com/Books/chapter-and-verse/2013/0802/Laurie-Halse-Anderson-s-Speak-will-be-adapted-as-a-graphic-novel
QR Code to Subscription page
Start your subscription today
https://www.csmonitor.com/subscribe