Chosen by Rob Biddulph, Guest Editor September 2022, as one of his top recommendations - "This was published a few years ago, but Katherine’s books are such favourites in the Biddulph household that I felt the need to tell you about them just in case, for some strange reason, you’ve not read one. I could have chosen any of her titles, but I’ve gone for Rooftoppers because my daughter Poppy told me it was her favourite. It tells the story of Sophie, who as a baby was found floating in a cello case in the middle of the English Channel, and her rescuer (and subsequent father figure) Charles Maxim. His parenting methods might be fairly unorthodox – chips and a drop of whiskey for tea, anyone? – but there is no doubting the love he has for his ward. Their relationship only serves as a backdrop to the main storyline, but it is the bedrock to which the book’s emotional heart is anchored. Trust me, if you read this book you will love it, and become as big a fan of Katherine’s as we are."
My mother is still alive, and she is going to come for me one day. Everyone thinks that Sophie is an orphan. True, there were no other recorded female survivors from the shipwreck which left baby Sophie floating in the English Channel in a cello case, but Sophie remembers seeing her mother wave for help. Her guardian tells her it is almost impossible that her mother is still alive, but that means still possible. You should never ignore a possible. So when the Welfare Agency writes to her guardian threatening to send Sophie to an orphanage, she takes matters into her own hands and flees to Paris to look for her mother, starting with the only clue she has - the address of the cello maker. Evading the French authorities, she meets Matteo and his network of rooftoppers - urchins who live in the sky. Together they scour the city for Sophie's mother before she is caught and sent back to London, and most importantly before she loses hope.
Katherine Rundell is a multi-million-bestselling author whose novels for children have won the Waterstones Children’s Book Prize, the Blue Peter Book Award and the Costa Children’s Book Award, among many others. Impossible Creatures was Waterstones Book of the Year 2023, and in 2024 Katherine was named the British Book Awards Author of the Year and Impossible Creatures won the Children’s Fiction Book of the Year.
Her books for adults include Super-Infinite, winner of the Baillie Gifford Prize.
Katherine spent her childhood in Africa and Europe before taking her degree at the University of Oxford and becoming a Quondam Fellow of All Souls College and a Fellow of St Catherine’s College, Oxford, where she works on Renaissance literature.
Very occasionally she goes climbing across the rooftops of Oxford late at night.
