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Summary
Summary
"The beauty of sky, music, and the belief in 'extraordinary things' triumph in this whimsical and magical tale" ( Publishers Weekly ) about a girl in search of her past who discovers a secret rooftop world in Paris.
Everyone thinks that Sophie is an orphan. True, there were no other recorded female survivors from the shipwreck that left baby Sophie floating in the English Channel in a cello case, but Sophie remembers seeing her mother wave for help. Her guardian tells her it is almost impossible that her mother is still alive--but "almost impossible" means "still possible." And you should never ignore a possible.
So when the Welfare Agency writes to her guardian, threatening to send Sophie to an orphanage, they takes matters into their own hands and flee to Paris to look for Sophie's mother, starting with the only clue they have--the address of the cello maker.
Evading the French authorities, she meets Matteo and his network of rooftoppers--urchins who live in the hidden spaces above the city. Together they scour the city in a search for Sophie's mother--but can they find her before Sophie is caught and sent back to London? Or, more importantly, before she loses hope?
Phillip Pullman, author of the His Dark Materials series, calls Rooftoppers "the work of a writer with an utterly distinctive voice and a wild imagination."
Author Notes
Katherine Rundell was born in 1987. She is a Fellow of All Souls College, Oxford. Her books include The Girl Savage and The Wolf Wilder. She received several awards including the Waterstones Children's Book Prize and the Blue Peter Award in 2014 for Rooftoppers, the Boston Globe-Horn Book Award for Cartwheeling in Thunderstorms, and the Costa Award for Children's book in 2017 for The Explorers.
(Bowker Author Biography)
Reviews (6)
School Library Journal Review
Gr 3-7-A child's life started anew on its first birthday when she was found floating in a cello case after a shipwreck in the English Channel. After being rescued by a fellow passenger, Charles Maxim, she was named Sophie, and she had a happy though unconventional childhood with Charles. He was a memorable guardian: eccentric, loved and loving, and unmarried. None of this presented a huge problem until Sophie's 12th birthday when Sophie's trousers, lack of training in womanly arts, and other idiosyncrasies of the household were no longer acceptable to a rigid child welfare investigator, and Charles is informed that she will no longer be allowed to live with him; young ladies must have proper training, which is more readily available in an orphanage. Uncovering a clue in her cello case, Charles and Sophie set off to find Sophie's long-lost mother. Their quest takes them to Paris, where Charles pursues conventional lines of inquiry, while Sophie heads to the roofs of the city with a new friend, Matteo, and other "rooftoppers," orphaned children who live high above the city streets. Rich description brings scenes vividly into focus, as does the humorous interplay between characters. The mystery and magic of this exciting story (S & S, 2013) are enhanced by Nicola Barber's perfectly paced reading, well delivered all the way to the tale's satisfying conclusion.-Maria Salvadore, formerly of District of Columbia Public Library (c) Copyright 2014. Library Journals LLC, a wholly owned subsidiary of Media Source, Inc. No redistribution permitted.
Publisher's Weekly Review
A baby found floating in a cello case in the English Channel, and Charles Maxim, a scholar and fellow survivor of a mysterious shipwreck, become an unconventional family, guided by the philosophy that "You should never ignore a possible." Permissive but caring, Charles lets the baby, whom he names Sophie, write on walls, eat off books, climb things, and indulge in "mother-watching" as the years pass, until unwanted attention from the National Childcare Agency sends them in search of Sophie's cello-playing mother. In Paris, 12-year-old Sophie takes to the rooftops, guided by irrepressible roof-dweller Matteo, an orphanage escapee who literally shows her the ropes; in one breathtaking scene, he walks her on a tightrope between buildings ("Grip with your toes. Left. Stop. Do not look down"). Eccentric, tactile food imagery appears throughout, from Charles's pork pie served on the Bible to Matteo's fresh-cooked rat. While the children's uncanny survival skills take occasionally graphic turns, as in a brutal fight between rooftopper tribes, the beauty of sky, music, and the belief in "extraordinary things" triumph in this whimsical and magical tale. Ages 8-12. Agent: Claire Wilson, Rogers, Coleridge & White. (Sept.) (c) Copyright PWxyz, LLC. All rights reserved.
Horn Book Review
Apparent orphan Sophie, on the run with her unconventional guardian Charles, meets a band of children who live on Paris's rooftops to avoid orphanages. Though this nineteenth-century yarn has no magical elements, its whimsy, insistence that one "never ignore a possible," and even its circular spot art give it a fantastical aura. Spoiler: Sophie is less alone than she thought. (c) Copyright 2014. The Horn Book, Inc., a wholly owned subsidiary of Media Source, Inc. No redistribution permitted.
Kirkus Review
"Never ignore a possible." Sophie takes her beloved guardian's words to heart and never gives up on finding her long-lost mother. One-year-old Sophie is found floating in a cello case in the English Channel by Charles Maxim, a fellow passenger on the freshly sunk Queen Mary: "He noticed that it was a girl, with hair the color of lightning, and the smile of a shy person." He decides to keep her. The bookish pair lives a harmonious, gloriously unorthodox life together--she prefers trousers to skirts, knows the collective noun for toads and uses atlases as plates. The National Childcare Agency does not approve, so when a clue in Sophie's cello case links her mother to Paris, Charles and Sophie decide to skip town after her 12th birthday. Once ensconced in her Parisian attic hideaway, Sophie gets a skylight visit from a teenage "rooftopper" named Matteo, who eats pigeons and never, ever descends to street level. Sophie--anxious to help Charles find her mother--secretly joins the boy atop Paris night after night, listening for her cello-playing. Vivid descriptions of fierce kids in survival mode and death-defying rooftop scrambles are breathlessly exciting, as is the bubbling suspense of Sophie's impassioned search for the possible. Brava! This witty, inventively poetic, fairy-talelike adventure shimmers with love, magic and music. (Adventure. 9-12)]] Copyright Kirkus Reviews, used with permission.
Booklist Review
*Starred Review* When a ship sinks, a one-year-old baby is found floating in a cello case in the English Channel, wrapped in the score of a symphony. She is saved by one of the passengers, a gangly young scholar named Charles Maxwell. Charles decides to keep her. This will cause problems because a single man having a young girl as his ward is frowned upon in 1890s London. Until then, Sophie has a wonderful life living in his drafty house, being taught all manner of interesting things by Charles, and wearing whatever she likes, especially trousers. Yet, one thing bothers Sophie very much: she is sure her mother is still alive. When Sophie is 12, the authorities order her to an orphanage. Instead, Sophie and Charles flee to Paris, where the cello case was made the first clue to her origins. What follows is a glorious adventure set mostly on the rooftops of Paris. Sophie meets Matteo, who lives on Parisian roofs, and his pals, street kids who help her in her quest. The story is magic, though not in the usual sense. Rundell's writing is suffused with sparkling images Sophie's hair is the color of lightning and she writes with a perfect mix of dreaminess and humor. The characters shine, too: Charles, the perfect guardian, who uses toast as a bookmark; Matteo, miserable and marvelous by turns; and the inimitable, unsinkable (literally) Sophie, who doesn't give up. Here's a heartwarming charmer.--Cooper, Ilene Copyright 2010 Booklist
New York Review of Books Review
IN MANY CLASSIC children's novels, parents are a problem best dispensed with early on. Life only gets interesting - if, typically, more unpleasant - once they are out of the way. Hence the popularity of the orphan plot, from Dickens to Rowling, and, lately, its contemporary cousin, the single-parent plot (see "The Hunger Games" and "Twilight"). In this last respect, "Rooftoppers," Katherine Rundell's winsome contribution to the genre, is a throwback, avoiding the hard-boiled life lessons of the modern child's thriller in favor of the wishful logic of the fairy tale. It opens on the high seas, where a baby, swaddled in the score of a Beethoven symphony, drifts along in a cello case, an improbable survivor of shipwreck. Thus is the baby liberated to the promise of an irregular life, though in Rundell's inspired twist Charles Maxim, the baby's rescuer and guardian, is no petty sadist, in the mold of Dickens's Edward Murdstone or Rowling's Vernon Dursley. Rather, Charles is a genteelly impoverished London bachelor, a fellow passenger on the doomed ship and, more important, a free spirit who provides his young charge with a satisfyingly unorthodox, if wholly benevolent, upbringing. Charles names the baby Sophie and promptly begins reading to her from "A Midsummer Night's Dream." Rundell, a Ph.D. candidate at Oxford and the author of a previous middle-grade novel, which will be released here next year, gets droll mileage from Charles's heretical repurposing of the contents of his beloved library: His copy of "Hamlet" becomes Sophie's booster seat; his Bible becomes her plate, a practical solution to her tendency to shatter china. None of this sits well with the lady from the National Child Care Agency, who makes a dreaded weekly call. Compounding her horror, Charles allows Sophie to wear trousers, climb trees and scrawl notes on the wallpaper in the front hall. ("The more words in a house the better," is his irreproachable defense.) Moreover, his attempt at childproofing consists of relabeling the whiskey bottle CAT'S URINE, an unsuccessful ruse: Sophie "had uncorked the bottle and sipped it, and then sniffed at the underside of the cat next door. They were not at all similar, though equally unpleasant." Worst of all, Charles indulges Sophie's fantasy that her mother - whom she claims to remember, a fuzzy impression of a cello and tapping feet - survived the shipwreck. "Never ignore a possible" is his mantra. It's pleasant to be cocooned in Charles and Sophie's domestic idyll, to be lulled by Rundell's gentle wit and inventive descriptions, particularly of bodies and faces: Sophie has "legs as long and thin as golf umbrellas" and "hair the color of lightning," while an inspector from the child care agency has "an expression like a damp sock." Just when the quaintness begins to feel treacly, Rundell sends Charles and Sophie fleeing to France. The effect is invigorating, like a pinch of cayenne in a cup of cocoa. The proceedings take a furtive, nocturnal turn, and Rundell's conjuring skills are at full power. With the child care agency bearing down, and only the slimmest of leads to go on, Charles and Sophie embark on a desperate search through Paris for her mother. After run-ins with the French police, and fearing for Sophie's safety, Charles confines her to her garret hotel room. On her own at last, she climbs through the skylight above her bed and into a marvelous, but just possible, world, populated by roof-dwelling orphans - the rooftoppers of the title - who readily undertake to assist her mother hunt. Parkour-style stunts ensue, including a heart-stopping tightrope walk 50 feet off the ground and a scramble to the bell tower of Notre Dame, where a rooftopper with impeccable manners and a jacket apparently sewn from doormats makes his home, as Quasimodo once did, among the gargoyles. There is also some after-hours diving in the Seine, and a rooftop brawl involving chimney pots and pigeon bones. The violence is muted and quickly over; Rundell is mostly interested in showing us how life so high up might actually work, down to pigeon-feather sheets and drainpipe toilets. "Adults are taught not to believe anything unless it is boring or ugly," Charles says at a moment of discouragement. "It is difficult to believe extraordinary things." Sophie and the rooftoppers know better. EMILY EAKIN has written for The New Yorker and The New York Times Magazine, among other publications.