When Sophie and Charles are travelling to Paris on the train, Sophie chooses a strawberry biscuit that "glinted like rubies" and tasted "like adventure". This suggests that Sophie is trying new things that might be unexpected but which are exciting. Rundell’s writing is a thing of beauty, smooth and elegant, easy and utterly charming. She created a wonderful and magical story, full of love and unconventional beauty. It is almost impossible to describe why this book feels so much like a classic, but it does. Books like Rooftoppers are extremely rare and I’m eager to share it with the people I love. We have 5 read-alikes for Rooftoppers, but non-members are limited to two results. To see the complete list of this book's read-alikes, you need to be a member. Source: Katherine Rundell Katherine Rundell was born in 1987 and grew up in Africa and Europe. In 2008 she was elected a Fellow of All Souls College, Oxford. Her first book, The Girl Savage, was born of her love of Zimbabwe and her own childhood there; her second, Rooftoppers, was inspired by summers working in Paris and by night-time trespassing on the rooftops of All Souls. She is currently working on her doctorate alongside an adult novel. a highly improbable traverse on a tightrope between buildings, without any training, described as 'a safer option'.

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.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.

Presenter: John Wilson (broadcaster) Producer: Hilary Dunn (3 January 2018). "Neil Cross, Katherine Rundell, Book prize judging". Front Row. 11:55 minutes in. BBC. BBC Radio 4 . Retrieved 3 January 2018. Rundell is an astonishing young talent and her books combine old-fashioned, edge-of-your-seat adventure with richly imagined characters … Read everything she writesCello music plays a pivotal role in Rooftoppers. The cello is a string instrument played with a bow. It has four strings tuned to perfect fifths. It is an octave lower than a viola, and an octave and a fifth lower than a violin. The name "cello" is an abbreviation of the Italian violoncello, which means "little violone". There are some odd parts where Sophie lies about where she is going at night to her guardian and he tells her some confusing stuff about it being okay to lie. It seemed odd and unnecessary that her caring guardian would let (I am guessing Sophie is an 8 or 9 yr old) out in the capital at night, all night. There are thousands and thousands of things we have not believed that turned out to be true. [...] One should not ingore the smallest glimmer of possiblity." Rooftoppers was a fun read. If my ten year old self had read this, surely I would have rated the book 4 stars. My adult self wasn't as invested (since I wasn't the target audience; my opinion doesn't count against children!), even though I appreciated the charm of the story. Matteo reminded me slightly of a childlike Han Alister, or perhaps a far more innocent version of a scamp from Oliver Twist.