I wish that I could have read Katherine Rundell’s books when I was a girl because as I read them now, as an adult, they manage to touch me in ways that I know would have been more intense as a younger person and I wonder what woman I would be like now if I’d read them then. However, Rundell is an author who would entice you as an adult to read children’s books and I wholeheartedly concur.
In this book, we are concerned with Sophie, who is discovered by a man called Charles as a baby after a shipwreck and decides, unlikely though it might be, to keep her and become her guardian. Sophie is a tom boy, more comfortable in trousers and not concerned with appearance – she is a free spirit. Charles is an educated man who brings Sophie up, exposing her to the things that he deems important but which society may scorn.
It is inevitable then that the authorities will intervene and Sophie and Charles are in danger of being separated. The only thing that may prevent this is if Sophie can find her mother who she believes is still alive through some child’s intuition or belief in maternal connectedness.
The trail takes them to Paris and here the adventure really starts as Sophie meets a boy who lives on the roof, an orphan like herself who is surviving without adults. She has her eyes opened to many things, not least traversing very high buildings, and a friendship and begrudging respect for each other forms.
I loved this book. I loved the life that Sophie has with Charles and the bumbling way he brings her up which is all centred on love; I loved the encounters that Sophie has in Paris and the characters that she meets; I loved the way the book ends; I loved the strong female characters which Katherine Rundell does so well, whether young girls or strong mothers.
She is, and continues to be, one of my favourite authors and I would bid all of you with young girls to read her books with them or buy them for them to read themselves, to show them girls of courage and independence and stubbornness in the face of convention so that they can see what they could become despite what society may expect.
Would highly recommend.
Rachel Rating: 5 out of 5 stars
Scuffed Granny 