Rooftoppers: 10th Anniversary Edition

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Rooftoppers started out brilliantly; the first chapters were full of whimsy and a sense of randomness that I completely fell in love with. The beginning of the story, which chronicles how our heroine, Sophie, is found as a baby floating in the ocean in a cello case and adopted by the kind-hearted scholar, Charles, was a pure delight. Sad, child, but not stupid. It is difficult to believe extraordinary things. It’s a talent you have, Sophie. Don’t lose it."It is difficult to believe extraordinary things when you're an adult. But children can, which is why Katherine Rundell's wonderfully fanciful book won both the Waterstone and Blue Peter prizes for children's literature when it came out in 2014. By the same token, it is difficult for an adult to review; we can celebrate the times we share a childlike delight, certainly, but how can we be sure that when it gets a little repetitious to us, it is not in fact drawing the child reader even deeper into its spell? 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. She knows how to read, and how to draw. She knows the difference between a tortoise and a turtle. She knows one tree from another, and how to climb them. Only this morning she was telling me what is the collective noun for toads." Everyone thinks Sophie is an orphan. It is almost impossible that her mother is still alive — but "almost impossible" means "still possible." And you should never ignore a possible.

Fred es un niño inglés, del que todo el mundo dice que es un niño tranquilo y sensato, pero que siempre ha soñado con ser explorador. Ahora tiene que demostrarse a si mismo si realmente tiene madera de explorador. When they began to play the music was different. It was sweeter and wilder. Sophie sat up properly and shifted forward until only half an inch of her bottom was on the seat. It was so beautiful that it was difficult for her to breathe. If music can shine, Sophie thought, this music shone. It was like all the voices in all the choirs in the city rolled into a single melody. Her chest felt oddly swollen. It’s a mystery that drives the story, but the characters of the determined Sophie and bookish Charles are easy to love, which really makes the story as good as it is. The idea of “rooftoppers”, the people who live on roofs, jumping from rooftop to rooftop, is interesting, and it’s fun to follow Sophie as she becomes tangled up with the rooftoppers.

Oddly, I had a really hard time getting into this one. It's right up my alley, so I'm not sure exactly why that was. My best guess is that this book read just like watching a movie. You could see every move people made, and hear what they said, and experience what they saw...but it didn't have the depth that I expect in a book. Yes, even a middle-grade book.

This is also a bit of historical fiction that takes place in England and Paris, which makes it stand out from other middle grade books. I loved the way this narrative ran, it was a classic survival-in-the-wild style story but then we are introduced to a mysterious man called 'The Explorer' (I must not have read the blurb because this aspect was a surprise to me!). I loved this element of the story especially since this figure felt sinister at first but his development revealed hidden depths and a heart-warming relationship with one of our protagonists. a highly improbable traverse on a tightrope between buildings, without any training, described as 'a safer option'.My main complaint is that the ending was rather abrupt and didn't exactly fit the flow of the story. Also at one point Charles tells Sophie that keeping secrets from him is okay (idk exactly what he means by that) which isn't exactly something you'd want your kid doing so..... Other than that, I loved the whimsical feeling to the story and the children who live on rooftops (especially Matteo who was so cute 🥰) Miss Eliot also disliked Charles's hands, which were inky, and his hat, which was coming adrift round the brim. She disapproved of Sophie's clothes. I feel it would take quite a bit to make me want to scramble around on Parisian rooftops. Don’t get me wrong, I’m not scared of heights in any way, and the views… well, they’d be pretty incredible, wouldn’t they? The Hong Kong urban adventurers for whom nothing is too tall, or deep, or spooky". South China Morning Post . Retrieved 11 February 2017.