A Very Newyorkish Christmas Story

In the city that is too busy, the most important thing anyone can do is pay attention.It is eleven days before Christmas. In a fifth-floor apartment above a restaurant on 47 Street and 9th Avenue in Hell’s Kitchen, a man is eating alone, watching the news, when the fork falls from his hand. He recognizes the girl on the screen. To understand why - and what it means - we have to go back.Eleven days. Ten years old. Nine blocks. Eight million people.Angelica lives at Dickens House, a home for found families on Manhattan’s West 47th Street. She knows that Dickens House is the kind of place that makes a city worth living in. She also knows that it will be gone by nine o’clock tomorrow morning unless someone does something.So she does something.She writes a sign. She stands on a corner. She holds it up.What happens next involves a man with a briefcase full of secrets, an intern on his very first day of navigating Times Square, two collectors who manage to get covered in three colors of paint and accidentally perform Bohemian Rhapsody inside a submarine, a taxi chase through Hell’s Kitchen, and a dog named Reni who appeared from nowhere with a pink ribbon around his neck and has been waiting for exactly this person for a very long time.And a white feather. And where it came from.For Readers Who Love Stories where children are the ones who act, while adults are still figuring out what to do. New York City the way it actually is - steam rising from manholes, halal carts, the Rockefeller tree at six forty-seven on Christmas Eve. Books for the child reading it and for the adult reading over their shoulder.Perfect for Ages 8-12 as a primary audience. Strong adult crossover , adults who love Dickens, O. Henry, and the specific magic of New York in December. Anyone who has ever felt small in a very large city and discovered that small is exactly the right size for the thing that needed doing.A note on the title: Newyorkish is not a word. It is not in any dictionary. It is the kind of word New York would invent for itself if it had the time - which it doesn’t, but Angelica does.'The city paid attention. We are still here. And for some of us, the long silence has finally come to an end.'- Mrs. Rivera, Director, Dickens House