Leila raved about Kiki Strike: Inside the Shadow City last month and I've been looking forward to it ever since. I brought it along on my family trip and I've been staying up way too late the past couple of nights absorbing this book like it's air. It's funny and smart and full of girl power in the best possible way (five girl scouts with attitude who take on a series of tunnels and rooms built deep under NYC following Kiki, their leader, who is intent on all sorts of mysterious adventures that puts all the girls in danger but also makes their lives amazing). I kept thinking when I was reading it though that the book was "cheeky" in the best sort of British way. (It's not a British book though.) The author knows that some of what she is writing is outlandish or hard to believe but she writes it in such a way that she lets readers know that she knows how far she is pushing the boundaries and thus we are all more than happy to go along for the ride. (I think the best James Bond movies accomplish this as well - see Connery and Brosnan and Moore although only in For Your Eyes Only and possibly Moonraker.)
The most surprising thing about Kiki to me though, is that the heroine is another bookish girl! Ananka isn't the classic bookish girl (I'm realizing as I put this column together that there is no classic bg), but she lives in an apartment with parents who have books everywhere and are always working on one PHD or another. When the girls get together Ananka's home library is the perfect source for all the esoteric information that is necessary to enter the Shadow City. And if that isn't all totally cool, Ananka's job in the group is to map the city and maps play a huge part in the story's plot. There's geography, history, fashion, natural science - all kinds of wickedly cool bits of information as the girls get down to finding out what lies beneath NY. The whole book is amazing (really really amazing) and it caps off what will be one of my more unique YA columns for Bookslut. I'm looking foward to writing about Kiki and all of my bookish girls. Here's hoping I can send some addicted readers in the direction of city maps - there could be all kinds of places we don't know enough about and Kiki is the best kind of adventure to spark some looking.
Loved this one - totally and absolutely loved it!
June 30
2006
07:32 AM
Hooray! Hooray hooray hooray!
Bloomsbury sent me an "I am Kiki Strike" t-shirt a while back -- I've been wearing it (at least) weekly. My female middle school patrons are SO jealous.