Review
From the book jacket: Life will never be the same for Ananka Fishbein
after she ventures into an enormous sinkhole near her New York City apartment. A
million rats, delinquent Girl Scouts out for revenge, and a secret city below
the streets of Manhattan combine in this remarkable novel about a darker side of
New York City you have only just begun to know about.
Comment: Seventh grader Ananka Fishbein's life at the expensive Atalanta
School in New York is "flavorless mush" until the morning a huge (but temporary)
sinkhole appears in a park across the street from her house. No one else
is awake to see it, so Ananka sets out by herself to explore the sinkhole and
discovers a hidden subterranean world. Soon after, she meets pint-sized,
mysterious, martial arts expert Kiki Strike at school who introduces her to a
group of 12-year-old girls who...
Beyond the Book
Kirsten Miller works in advertising in New York. She says that the idea
for
Kiki Strike did not come to her all at once, but that Kiki was the first
character to arrive, because she loved the idea of a young, female mastermind
who lived by her own set of rules (not all of them good). Then, in 2001,
she heard about the front lawn of a nursing home in Manhattan that had collapsed
revealing the forgotten basement of a building that had been torn down eighty
years before; the room was complete with tables, chairs and even wall
decorations. This was one of the events that triggered Miller's
fascination with the many other tunnels and hidden rooms under New York, which
inspired her to create the Shadow City.
"I wanted to create female...
