Never ignore a possible
"Perhaps, she thought, that's what love does. It's not there to make you feel special. It's to make you brave. It was like a ration pack in the desert, Sophie thought, like a box of matches in a dark wood. Love and courage, thought Sophie- two words for the same thing."
The only things that Sophie has of her mother are memories from when she was one year old and a single cello case. Eleven years after the sinking of the Queen Mary, and she still doesn't know where she is. But despite what everyone says, Sophie knows her mother is alive. And an address, a journey to Paris, and children that live in the skies might just be the key to finding her...
This book provides examples of:
- Action Girl: Anastasia, Safi, and Sophie.
- Bathos: In the beginning of the book, when the Queen Mary sinks as its band is still playing, we get this:Sometimes the shriek of a passenger duetted with a high C.
- Blatant Lies: Sophie telling Charles that she never left the house, while being caked in dirt, grime and blood.
- Bookworm: Sophie is so committed that, when she can't use her hands, she flips pages with her mouth. Charles' love for reading was nearly the death of him. Literally.He had once nearly killed himself trying to read and ride a horse at the same time.
- Catchphrase: Charles and Sophie's "Never ignore a possible."
- Character Development: Sophie and Matteo.
- Daddy's Girl: Sophie met Charles at the age of one after being fished out of the ocean by him. They are, however so close that the two of them don't think twice about moving all the way to Paris and risking arrest so they can stay together.
- Dark and Troubled Past: Matteo
- The Determinator: When learning how to jump from rooftop to rooftop from fifty feet above, walking a tightrope, and breaking a few dozen laws are what Sophie has to do to get a chance at seeing her mother, she swallows her terror and jumps in.
- Earn Your Happy Ending
- Foil: Miss Eliot's realism and conformity to Sophie and Charles' optimism and individuality.
- Jerk with a Heart of Gold: Matteo
- The Pig-Pen: Matteo
- The Quiet One: Safi
- A Rare Sentence: When Sophie thinks she's going to die because she never looked properly at a pig.Matteo: I hold the back of your nightdress, so you can't fall- and you take a step.Sophie: How big?Matteo: About the length of a pig.The length of a pig, thought Sophie. She was going to die because she had never looked properly at a pig.
- Silly Rabbit, Cynicism Is for Losers!: Can somebody who isn't known to be dead or alive, hasn't been heard from in eleven years, and could be anywhere in the whole world, be found by a memory from when you were one and an address inside a cello case? Yes! We learned that in preschool, Miss Eliot!
- Took a Level in Kindness: Matteo
- Le Parkour: Skytoppers would rather do this than crossing the street.
