Goth Girl Rising

Lyga, Barry. Goth Girl Rising. ISBN-10: 0547076645, ISBN-13: 9780547076649. Houghton Mifflin Harcourt. 2009.

Summary
In this sequel to The Astonishing Adventures of Fanboy and Goth Girl, Kyra (also known as Goth Girl) has just been released from the Maryland Mental Health Unit after a 6-month stay. She comes out just as angry as she was when she went in and is now looking for the one person she knows understands her. When she finds Fanboy, she's devastated by the change in him. He's unrecognizable, and her fury for her dad overflows over to Fanboy. She's set on destroying his new found confidence and popularity, by exposing that Schemata (his comic book) is nothing that his classmates think it is. Goth Girl's ire is rising, but will revenge quench it?

Critical Evaluation
This time around, Barry Lyga focuses in on Goth Girl, and goes deeper into explaining who she is and what made her. Her stay in the Maryland Mental Hospital has done nothing for her attitude. She's still angry at the world. She's especially livid with her father for putting her in the hospital, and with Fanboy who has transformed from the quiet loner she left behind into someone she doesn't recognize. Fueled with her rage, she emotionally tortures her dad, and plots to ruin Fanboy's popularity and expose his comic book. Kyra remembers Fanboy's book as an homage to a senior Fanboy had a crush on, but hasn't seen how it's change to reflect a very different heroine.

Kyra is a hard character to like, but readers will be able to relate with her feelings of isolation. Her alienation and loneliness is particularly hard to face for her, as life has gone on while she was away. And other readers will find that Kyra's friends to be irritating with their unoriginal thoughts, their replication of her all-white style, and their constant need to hook-up. Readers will see that the poem that grows throughout the novel shows that Kyra's anger goes very deep, and Goth Girl is an antihero you hope finds her way.

Reader's Annotation
Goth Girl has been in the mental hospital because she took his bullet and the gun. Now that she's been released, Goth Girl is searching for Fanboy and realizes he's not the same boy she left behind… and she remembers it was HE who called her dad, making him as much to blame as her dad for putting her in the hospital. And she's looking for revenge.

About the Author
Barry Lyga is the popular author of The Astonishing Adventures of Fanboy and Goth Girl, as well as a collector and activist of comic books. After he graduated from Yale (with a degree in English) he went to work in the comic book world, and he was a major player in the development of Free Comic Book day*. He served as the spokesperson for industry and is well-quoted in numerous publications as well as penning a book on the topic on incorporating these graphic materials into schools and school libraries.

Lyga changed gears a bit when he jumped into the realm of young adult novels. He used his vast comic book knowledge to write the rave-reviewed young adult book The Astonishing Adventures of Fanboy and Goth Girl in 2006. Boy Toy followed in 2007, and it was garnered enthusiastic reviews. In 2008, Hero-Type was released, and then in 2009 Goth Girl Rising the sequel toThe Astonishing Adventures of Fanboy and Goth Girl was published. He's also written books for middle school aged readers, short stories, a film and copious articles and essays. Lyga was named a "Flying Start" from Publisher's Weekly for his strong debut in 2006.

Genre
Girls/Women
Mental Illness
Death/Dying

Challenges
Sexual Content
Language
Parental Angst

Curriculum Ties
Psychology: teen depression and suicide

Booktalking Ideas
At what lengths would you go to extract revenge…

Awards
n/a

Reading Level/Interest Age
Ages 15+

Why I included this title...
After reading The Astonishing Adventures of Fanboy and Goth Girl I needed to know what happened to Kyra. And I'm adding Barry Lyga to my list of favorite authors.