Review

Sophie was discovered by eccentric scholar Charles when she was one year old, floating in a cello case, having survived a shipwreck. They live together in a happy, if wonderfully shambolic, early 1900s London household. Charles encourages Sophie to be clever, creative and brave, and is less worried about things like neat clothes and ladylike behaviour. Food and music are important; cross stitch and skirt-wearing are not.

When the horrid Miss Eliot decides that Sophie can no longer continue her unconventional life with Charles, and must be removed to an orphanage, they escape to Paris, where Sophie thinks she will find her mother, still alive. And she finds some unexpected allies: children who live on the rooftops.

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This is an odd but enjoyable book. It’s aimed at a middle grade audience, but it’s also very literary in feel. Someone on GoodReads mentioned that it seemed like an instant classic. Rundell is a clever clog: a fellow in English Literature at All Souls College, Oxford University. As well as her award winning children’s books, she won the (UK) Baillie Gifford Prize for Non-Fiction for her biography of John Donne: Super-Infinite: The Transformations of John Donne. She can tightrope walk and roofclimb, and she grew up in Zimbabwe.

My point is, I suppose, that like Sophie, she is clever, brave and unconventional.

The book is full of original imagery, adventure, peril, grottiness and food – all great stuff. At first I thought it was terrific. Then a few pages in, I started to find the imagery a bit too contrived. And then I picked it up again and found it entrancing. So there you go. I thought it might be a good book for our year 7 students, to go with their film study of Hugo.

(Also, let me beg you to listen to her series of five short audio essays about children’s fiction: The Lion, the Witch and the Wonder. Absolutely brilliant.)

Here are some taster quotations:

By the time she turned seven, she had legs as long and thin as golf umbrellas, and a collection of stubborn certainties. (p. 8)

The train was twice the size Sophie had expected, and green. It was the green that emeralds and dragons usually come in; which felt to Sophie like a good omen. (p. 63)

At the bottom there was half a chocolate cake, still wet and sticky in the middle, and a jam jar filled with cream, and a fat parcel wrapped in greaseproof paper and newspaper.

‘Sausages! cried Matteo. They were thick as Sophie’s wrist.

Sophie counted them. ‘Twenty-two,’ she said. ‘Eleven each.’ (p.187)

This is middle grade fiction, suitable for 10 – 13 year olds, or older readers who just enjoy well written children’s literature. Year 7s who enjoy words and reading will especially like this, I think.

> Click here for content information – potential spoilers, enter at own risk!

Children’s fiction depictions of: shipwreck; orphans & possible orphans; possibly dead mothers; foster parents; child protective services; orphanages; threat of forced removal from home; violence between children; homelessness; hunger; killing animals (to eat); walking on rooftops and tightropes; other extremely perilous situations; sexism; police corruption.

Extra resources:

Rooftoppers Paris Roof-Hopping Challenge!

(They make a good case for the setting of Rooftoppers being early 1900s, rather than late Victorian.)

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Rundell, K. (2013). Rooftoppers. Faber and Faber.

Images are used on this blog post under the “Fair dealing for criticism or review” provision of the Commonwealth Copyright Act, 1968.