Rooftoppers: 10th Anniversary Edition

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On the morning of its first birthday, a baby was found floating in a cello case in the middle of the English Channel.

Finally, it's absolutely unbelievable. Yet another reason it bothered me but probably won't bother elementary readers. Helen Dunmore wins posthumous Costa poetry prize". BBC News Online. 2 January 2018 . Retrieved 2 January 2018.McElroy, Steven (26 August 2016). " 'Life According to Saki,' a Play Set in World War I, Wins Edinburgh Award". The New York Times. New York City . Retrieved 23 January 2017. When they travel to France to explore the possibility that some of Sophie's relatives may be in Paris, Charles disappears from the storyline and is replaced by the rooftoppers, homeless orphans living on the rooftops to avoid detection. Sophie sets out to find her mother. Her books have won many awards, including the Costa Children’s Book Award, the Blue Peter Book Award, and the Waterstones Children’s Book Prize. Sophie, Matteo, and the other teen ROOFTOPPERS have numerous scary episodes [including a big fight with a rival teen gang that lives in the train station] while clambering along the roofs, using them as a vantage point to search for Sophie's mother. They think her mother's name is Vivienne Vert which translates to Green in English, but no FEMALE passengers or crew members survived from the sinking Queen Mary, but Sophie won't give up. Meanwhile the authorities are closing in trying to put Sophie in an orphanage and Charles in jail for evading the law. The Wolf Wilder. Illustrated by Gelrev Ongbico. Bloomsbury Publishing. 10 September 2015. ISBN 978-1408862582. {{ cite book}}: CS1 maint: others ( link)

Rundell, Katherine (2016). 'And I am re-begot': the textual afterlives of John Donne (Thesis). University of Oxford. Jen gave me this lovely book for Christmas, and it was the perfect way to start off the reading year. You're likely to hear the 'timeless children's book' descriptor a lot, and with good reason. It's timeless in the sense that it's a non-specified date in the past (early 1900s? Later 1800s?) when women were not cellists and were not supposed to wear trousers, but when it also feels perfectly right for a delightful man like Charles to rescue a baby, take her home and raise her, without bothering either of them with stupid things like school. It's also timeless in that same way because it could be a Noel Streatfield if he got in a Nanny to help out. Miss Eliot reflects this Victorian attitude. She disapproves of Sophie's appearance and behaviour and says she would "be embarrassed to be seen with her". She disliked Sophie's watching, listening face. "It's not natural, in a little girl!" She hated their joint habit of writing each other notes on the wallpaper in the hall.Katherine Rundell's charmingly lyrical style is dotty in the way Charles is dotty. In the London section she seems interested mainly in conversations, which have a high quota of witticism (wearing a skirt, Sophie looks as if she's "mugged a librarian") and aphorisms (lawyers have all "the decency and courage of lavatory paper"). In general, her metaphors are determinedly original. Such verbal showiness, though entertaining, has the disadvantage of showing up the misses as well as the successes, and in the early stages the story has the contrived manner, but not the solidly exciting matter, of a fairytale. Moshenska, Joe (29 March 2022). "The Poet and the Whale". Literary Review . Retrieved 28 February 2023. I think the language and the style of the book perfectly complimented Sophie’s rather strange upbringing and the fantastic and slightly naïve way she interprets what’s happening around her. She was a gorgeous narrator and definitely one of my favourite middle grade heroines. Fearless, inquisitive and completely adorable; she truly was brilliant. And the setting? Let’s just say I want to go to Paris again…. now please. I adore Paris and it will always have a special place in my heart so it was so refreshing to read a story set there that wasn’t immediately bogged down by all the clichés that seem to latch themselves onto it. It was lovely to read about the city from a different perspective… one slightly higher than the others, shall we say? the more words in a house the better, Miss Eliot" (Charles to the busybody government child welfare agent, pg. 19)