Kiki Strike: The Darkness Dwellers, by Kirsten Miller: Sisterhood of theTraveling Underworld Explorers

Kiki Strike: The Darkness Dwellers
Kristen Miller
Bloomsbury: New York, 2013
ISBN: 9781599907369
ARC via NetGalley - now available in print and digitally

The Irregulars have finally returned and they are as smart, empowered, and adventurous in their all-female crime-thwarting efforts as they’ve always been.  Kiki Strike has left New York and the leadership of the Irregulars in Ananka Fishbein’s hands as she heads to Paris to claim her rightful throne as the displaced Pokrovian princess.  When she and her guardian disappear somewhere over the Atlantic, Ananka is faced with the task of finding Kiki and keeping the Irregulars in check.  A solution presents itself when Betty Bent, master of disguise, is offered a position in Paris as the personal assistant to a mysterious woman who runs a finishing school, and who has taken an interest in the challenge of the irascible Molly Dent (who naturally decides to stage a revolution in the school!).  Meanwhile, Ananka is working on keeping her crush on Betty’s boyfriend Kasper in check, Oona is tracking down her evil twin, and the others are working on an untested cure for female baldness that has garnered some pharmaceutical attention.  When Kiki makes contact via a cute French boy who just happens to be part of the secret society protecting the Parisian Catacombs known as the Darkness Dwellers, things begin to come together.  With bits of romance, history, humor, charm, danger, and lots of smart, loyal, and courageous young women, The Darkness Dwellers is a welcome, long anticipated addition to Kirsten Miller’s series.   It is strongly recommended for girls (and boys cool enough to pick it up) grades 6-10, and both middle school and public libraries.  

I first read Kiki Strike: In the Shadow City nigh on five or so years ago.  I was working at an all-girls school, and took the recommendation from the middle school librarian, she of the Parantheticals.  Guys - I loved it!  Kiki Strike and the Irregulars are everything we should want for our middle-school and young high-schoolers to be reading for fun!  Sure, it is fun fiction with action and slightly unrealistic things like kids stopping major crime syndicates.  But it’s really a lot more than that.  It is slyly smart, encourages creativity and thinking outside the box, and reminds kids that while it may be a little unrealistic to expect to stop said crime syndicates, even little people can make a difference.  What I think is really notable about this series, however, is the fact that it showcases many different types of intelligence - science, engineering, mapping, history, politics, art, etc.  Even more remarkable?  It so in the form of young girls - likeable, young girls (for the most part.  Kirsten Miller needs to work on a few of them)!  While for the obvious reason, girls will probably turn to this more than boys,  I do wish boys of the middle school ages would pick these up.  Seriously, little dudes.  If you like Katniss and Alex Rider, you’ll probably also like Kiki and the other Irregulars.

Tidbits: Feminists like nail polish, Legos, voting, art crime, AND sparkles

I've been hoarding these up for quite a while, team.  I feel pretty terrific about getting them out before the end of the year, so there's a strong chance someone will be treating herself to a cappuccino later today.  Happy 2012!

• Nominate your favorite YA book of 2011 on TeenReads! I'm more than a bit torn between Piper's Son and Scorpio Races.  Luckily, you get to nominate six titles.  PHEW. 

• Attention sparkleprincesses out there: the crack team behind the Hunger Games movie marketing has come out with a gimic you've probably seen on a thousand other blogs - Panem themed nail polish! As they note on this blog, the dozen colors seem to match up pretty well to each of the districts.  Except for 13, which is suspiciously missing from the map.  I smell a conspiracy!  Personally, I am hungry for foie gras.  Served in Peeta bread.

• This magazine cover made me groan when the mail came in at work a few weeks ago.  Boooooo.  I'm pretty sure little girls like Legos.  And they don't need them to be sparkly or pink for the fantasy dream houses and giant towers we build, only to be knocked down by our little siblings. You know, kind of the same way boys play.  How do I know this?  Because I am a girl.  And I loved Legos.  

• Let's keep going on this feminist bender! Here are thirteen fantastic female comic creators of 2011.  From this list, I've only read Anya's Ghost, but have been wanting to read Marzi for a while.  And now I want to read Ivy and Finder. 

• Ahem.  This lady totally has my dreamfantasy job (or rather, the positive version of my Thomas Crown/Uncommon Criminals fantasty).  Let's be best friends. 

PrE-views! Ally Carter's Uncommon Criminals

Confession:  I am an Art History dropout.  It is a sad but true fact of my life.  I love it, truly, madly, deeply.  I geek out indecently over old paintings and museums.  But apparently at 18 I thought that majoring in Spanish would be much more viable career path.  And now I am a high school librarian.  GO FIGURE! 

Um...but really my wild fantasy dream job was never art historian extraordinare.  It was, is (if this library thing doesn't work out!), top shelf art thief.  You can't really avoid this thought if you are say, an art-luvr living in a city where the Gardner Heist, the greatest unsolved art theft in all the lands  occurred (debatable, but I'm always right, so you lose!).  Thusly, when Heist Society dropped I was stoked!  And now that the second one (Uncommon Criminals) is imminent, I am doubly stoked! Unfortunately for all of us, it does not drop until June 21.  BUT.  BUT.

Join me in tiding ourselves over by reading the first two chapters online!  I salute you for inspiring my criminal mind to dream big, Ally Carter! 

Thusly, when it DOES drop, I promise to release my dream art theft hit list in its honor.  Check your security systems, museums of the world!  Thomas Crowne PaperblogPrincess is coming for you!

Lost in Translation: The Invisible, by Mats Wahl

The Invisible
by Mats Wahl
New York: Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 2007.
ISBN: 0-374-33609-1


     A Swedish Law and Order without the Law part of the show, the point of this book may be lost in a cultural shuffle.  A case of a violent crime leaves a teenage boy missing with no trace and a detective weeding through the thinly veiled racism and anti-immigrant sentiment in the town to find him.  But the detective is not alone; in a plot device surely lost in translation, the boy is an invisible party following, almost haunting the unwitting detective, but ultimately more haunted by what has happened to him and his invisibility.  The narrative is very matter of fact, the description is stark, the ending frankly a little cheesy, and though some of the characters are developed more may be archetypes.  The book does hold a certain charm for mystery and crime lovers, or fans of Swedish writing, and has even been made into a movie.  It is recommended for libraries with large collections that contain the movie.