Author: Kirsten Miller
Publisher (In Great Britain): Bloomsbury
Publication Year (In Great Britain): 2008
Most of the readers will be: Middle school girls.
Reader's Advisory: For another book with a strong female protagonist try The Secret Scroll by Lynne Ewing.
Summary:
Ananka Fishbein wakes up one morning to see a giant sink hole in the park across the street. Being chronically curious, she jumps in the hole to investigate. She sees a troll, a room, and a book. Ananka escapes with the book before the authorities come to fix the hole, and from it learns that there is a secret collection of tunnels and rooms beneath New York called the Shadow City. She would love to explore the Shadow City, but how will she get in?
Then Ananka meets Kiki Strike, the girl who wants to grow up to be "dangerous." Kiki recruits Ananka and a collection of delinquent girl scouts to join her on a journey into the Shadow City. What's more, she has found a way in through a crypt in a private cemetary. The girls call themselves the "Irregulars" and with their combined talents, almost nothing can stop them.
Ananka knows why she wants to explore the Shadow City, but she isn't so sure about Kiki's intentions. Then an accident floods Shadow City (and some of the streets of New York) and Kiki disappears. When the Irregulars find her again, should they trust her? Is she a villian they need to stop, or does she need their help to stop someone else?
My favorite passage:
"Did you hear about the rats?" I heard the woman ask. My stomach flip-flopped.
"What rats?" replied the man in a bored voice.
"It was on the news this morning. They said that a ship in the middle of the Hudson River was attacked by thousands of rats last night."
"Rats can swim?"
"Apparently," said the woman.
I had to bite my tongue to avoide offering the bit of trivia that sprang to mind. According to The Devil's Army rats are champion swimmers. During the plagues that laid waste to old New York, the dead were often buried in mass gravs on islands in the East RIver. Whenever the graves were left unfilled, the city's rat population would swim across to picnic on the exposed corpses.
"But what were a bunch of rats doing in the Hudson River?" asked the man.
"Nobody knows," the woman answered. "The reporter said they might have been swimming to New Jersey."
"That makes sense. New Jersey's a good place for them."
"They said the boat just got in the way."
"What happened to it?"
"Well from what I could gather, the crew abandoned the ship and escaped in life boats."
"That bad?" At last he was intrigued.
"I guess. The reporter said they ate the crew's dog."
"Rats eat dogs?"
"They eat anything, don't they?" said the woman.
The light changed, and the happy couple strolled off, arm in arm. I reached in my pocket for my Reverse Pied Piper. I had never imagined it could be quite so powerful, and I suddenly felt a little guilty. I wondered how my grandfather would have felt about what we had done. He probably would have packed up his bags and followed the rats to New Jersey. (pg 134-135)
What I really think:
The theory goes that girls will read books that have a male or female protagonist but boys will only read books with a male protagonist. But even if girls will read about boy heroes, why shouldn't they sink their teeth into a novel filled with girl power once in a while?
What makes this book even more empowering is that the Irregulars don't have super powers, they just have things they are really good at, like chemistry and forging documents. Most of the chapters end with advice, like the kind you would find in a guide book. So the reader can try her hand at spying and crime solving, too!
I found the passage of two years in the middle of the book to be a little weird. I'm not sure why Kiki couldn't have turned up again a month or two after she disappeared. But I suppose growing the girls up helped the storyline in some ways.
Over all, I love Kiki Strike and I love that there are books like this for girls.
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