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Summary
Summary
Kiara has Asperger's syndrome, and it's hard for her to make friends. So whenever her world doesn't make sense--which is often--she relies on Mr. Internet for answers. But there are some questions he can't answer, like why she always gets into trouble, and how do kids with Asperger's syndrome make friends? Kiara has a difficult time with other kids. They taunt her and she fights back. Now she's been kicked out of school. She wishes she could be like her hero Rogue--a misunderstood X-Men mutant who used to hurt anyone she touched until she learned how to control her special power.
When Chad moves in across the street, Kiara hopes that, for once, she'll be able to make friendship stick. When she learns his secret, she's so determined to keep Chad as a friend that she agrees not to tell. But being a true friend is more complicated than Mr. Internet could ever explain, and it might be just the thing that leads Kiara to find her own special power.
In Rogue, author Lyn Miller-Lachmann celebrates everyone's ability to discover and use whatever it is that makes them different.
Author Notes
Lyn Miller-Lachmann (www.lynmillerlachmann.com) also wrote the ALA Best Book for Young Adults and Bank Street Best Book Gringolandia, and edited Once Upon a Cuento, a short story collection for young readers by established and emerging Latino authors. She is the assistant host of Vientos del Pueblo, a bilingual radio show on WRPI-FM featuring Latin American and Spanish music, poetry, and history. Like Kiara, Lyn Miller-Lachmann has been diagnosed with Asperger's syndrome, giving her writing a unique perspective. She lives in Albany, New York.
Reviews (4)
School Library Journal Review
Gr 7-9-Kiara's mother is living in Montreal launching her career as a musician so her father sets his musical aspirations aside to be his daughter's caregiver. The eighth-grader's Asperger's syndrome does little to help her adjust to or understand her unsettled family situation. Mr. Internet is her go-to for black-and-white answers to the complexities of life. On the Net, Kiara also delves into a fantasy world of superhero personas and takes on the alter ego of Rogue. While she is academically successful, she is socially shunned. When she joins the popular girls' table-uninvited-she is ridiculed and publicly rejected. It does little for her case when she hauls off and slams her lunch tray into another girl's face. Now Kiara is friendless and expelled from school. She befriends her new neighbor, Chad, whose home is a meth den where he is forced to collect ingredients for his parents' lethal concoctions. Kiara spends lots of time trying to be Chad's friend and steer him in a better direction; he spends lots of time trying to survive the horror of his home life and being nasty to Kiara. Chad's and Kiara's fathers play music together in the backyard, so it's hard to believe that Kiara's dad doesn't notice how weird things are. The dangerous neighborhood happenings seem to completely escape him until there is a major explosion in the meth lab. Too much happens in this novel and too little of it revolves around Kiara.-Alison Follos, formerly at North Country School, Lake Placid, NY (c) Copyright 2013. Library Journals LLC, a wholly owned subsidiary of Media Source, Inc. No redistribution permitted.
Horn Book Review
Prone to emotional meltdowns, eighth grader Kiara ends up expelled from school, stuck at home with her distant father, longing for her absent mother, and desperate for a friend. Because of her Asperger's syndrome, she has difficulty connecting with people and instead identifies with the character Rogue of the X-Men ("The X-Men are mutants who don't fit into society. They're like me, but all of them have special powers"). When Kiara attempts to befriend Chad, her troubled new neighbor, she becomes a target for his exploitation -- he uses her to purchase large quantities of pseudoephedrine for his parents' meth lab. Unable to interpret social situations, Kiara doesn't realize she's being taken advantage of until after the fact, and she is caught between the desire to help Chad out of a dangerous situation and fear that she'll lose him if she stands up to him. Just when she thinks she's found a place for herself, videotaping Chad and other BMX riders at a bike park, Chad's family problems reach critical mass, leaving Kiara wishing for her own superpowers to fix the situation. The depth of Kiara's loneliness, her capacity for empathy (though she's unsure of when and how to express it), and her persistence in her quest for true friendship make the book a substantive addition to the emerging body of youth literature about Asperger's. shara l. hardeson (c) Copyright 2013. The Horn Book, Inc., a wholly owned subsidiary of Media Source, Inc. No redistribution permitted.
Kirkus Review
An eighth-grader's Asperger's syndrome complicates her navigation of an unpredictable--and often inexplicable--world. Kicked out of school after cracking a popular (and rather deserving) girl on the head with her lunch tray during one of her many anger-driven meltdowns, Kiara's searching for a real friend. When 12-year-old Chad and his little brother move in across the street, it seems like the perfect opportunity. Chad is deceitful, but Kiara quickly discovers it's mostly because his parents are using him to buy large quantities of Sudafed, an ingredient for their meth lab. She also explores a developing connection with Antonio, a friend of her older brother and someone who seems to understand her focus on Rogue, one of the X-Men, whom she views as a comforting alter ego. Whether Antonio's just being friendly or trying to exploit her innocence is never clear, but his attractiveness lands her and Chad at a high school drinking party. With her back-upsinger mother performing in Canada and her father not really understanding her, Kiara has few adult resources, and her frustration with the world rings true in her first-person narration. Her meltdowns, unfortunately, come off more as tantrums than manifestations of her syndrome, making her a less-attractive character than she deserves to be. An interesting and somewhat enlightening look at a girl struggling but sometimes making bumpy progress in dealing with Asperger's. (Fiction. 12-18)]] Copyright Kirkus Reviews, used with permission.
Booklist Review
This raw and edgy tale will leave readers almost as scarred as the boy who shares center stage with its narrator, a girl with Asperger's. Kiara's tendency to viciously lash out when she is angry or frustrated has finally gotten her kicked out of eighth grade. She finds companionship, of a sort, in a sweet, scruffy, young new neighbor and his fiercely protective big brother, Chad, who is as prickly and secretive as they come. As it turns out, Chad has plenty to hide. There is a drunken suicide attempt, and Chad has both bleeding internal burns from the meth lab his parents are running and external wounds from years of abuse. Meanwhile, Kiara's talent with a video camera gives her a measure of pride to place against a self-image hammered by twin convictions that she has been abandoned by her mother, and is a genetic mistake caused by her dad's chemo. Kiara's graphic, matter-of-fact descriptions after a climactic explosion in the lab add further stomach-churning intensity to her narrative. Though the author leaves Kiara and Chad in better places than they were, both are still wounded and facing steep personal challenges. A harrowing read.--Peters, John Copyright 2010 Booklist
