ISBN: 9780571280599
Charles Maxim, a man who had “kindness where other people had lungs, and politeness in his fingertips”, found baby Sophie floating in a cello case in the middle of the English Channel after the ship they were on sank.
Charles took her in and cared for her, and even though he taught her to read and write, and his love for literature (especially Shakespeare), transferred to Sophie, Miss Elliot from the Childcare Agency assured him Sophie was not to be in his care forever, because he was a man, and a man “can’t do this kind of thing alone”.
Sure as shooting, one day Charles receives a letter about a visit and the possibility of the authorities removing Sophie from his care, because she is “state property”. Sophie doesn’t handle the news very well, and in a fit of rage she destroys the cello case they have kept all those years and finds an address that might possibly lead them to her mother. Sophie always believed her mother did not go down with the ship and that she would one day come for her, but it seemed highly unlikely to others because there were no other female survivors.
Charles’ life philosophy, which Sophie came to live by – never ignore a possible – drives her to find her mother, and does so after a series of exciting adventures on the rooftops of Victorian Paris.
“There are thousands and thousands of things we have not believed, which have turned out to be true…one should not ignore the smallest glimmer of possibility”.
A captivating novel, the winner of the Blue Peter Book Award and the Waterstones Children’s Book Prize, and shortlisted for the CILIP Carnegie Medal, in the same category as A series of unfortunate events (Lemony Snicket), The Kneebone Boy (Ellen Potter), The Thief Lord (Cornelia Funke), I Coriander (Sally Gardner) and others.
