Rosie Raja Churchill's Spy - Sufiya Ahmed

 

Rosie has spent her entire life living in India as a princess, but when her Indian mother dies, her British father takes her to live in London.  She is not happy there and misses her home and her auntie in India; what’s more, her father seems to spend more time away for work instead of at their country home with her.

One evening, she discovers that her father has visitors coming for dinner so she decides to hide and find out what is going on.  However, she doesn’t expect to discover that her father is actually working for Churchill and the British government and is about to go away again.  Determined not to be left behind, she stows away on the plane and is only discovered when it is too late to turn back.  And so begins a thrilling but dangerous adventure for Rosie, alongside her father in WWII Paris, working to help the resistance. 

I have always had a weakness for books set during WWII, especially if they are set in Paris, so the arrival of Rosie Raja Churchill’s Spy filled with me joy, and, oh boy, it didn’t disappoint. 

Rosie is clearly miserable: she has lost her mother, her father is being distant, the governess she has won’t let her do the work she is capable of and she is missing her aunt, Rani-K, who is the queen of the kingdom in India where they lived.  It’s no wonder she is craving her father’s attention and steals away to be near him.  At first, I thought he was going to be a very traditional father figure but, once the book gets going, he surprised me and I liked him as a character.

Having recently been back to Paris, I was able to imagine the sort of café where they were based and spent their days helping the resistance.  Although there are no detailed descriptions of Paris itself, I could easily imagine myself alongside Rosie at every stage.  The adventure is tense and thrilling at every stage of their journey and I found myself unable to put the book down so that I could find out what was going to happen.  There is a very real feel to the action in a way that books that aren’t based in real historical events cannot have – in the back of my mind, I know that events like these actually happened to people and that has quite an effect on me.

Rosie Raja Churchill’s Spy is a wonderful book that would be perfect for upper KS2 children.  It would be great as a read aloud book during a WWII topic and I fully intend to share this with my new class next week.  I can’t wait to see what is in store for Rosie next.