Roll with It

by Jamie Sumner

A Kirkus Reviews Best Middle Grade Book of 2019

“A big-hearted story that’s as sweet as it is awesome.” —R.J. Palacio, author of Wonder

In the tradition of Wonder and Out of My Mind, this big-hearted middle grade debut tells the story of an irrepressible girl with cerebral palsy whose life takes an unexpected turn when she moves to a new town.

Ellie’s a girl who tells it like it is. That surprises some people, who see a kid in a wheelchair and think she’s going to be all sunshine and cuddles. The thing is, Ellie has big dreams: She might be eating Stouffer’s for dinner, but one day she’s going to be a professional baker. If she’s not writing fan letters to her favorite celebrity chefs, she’s practicing recipes on her well-meaning, if overworked, mother.

But when Ellie and her mom move so they can help take care of her ailing grandpa, Ellie has to start all over again in a new town at a new school. Except she’s not just the new kid—she’s the new kid in the wheelchair who lives in the trailer park on the wrong side of town. It all feels like one challenge too many, until Ellie starts to make her first-ever friends. Now she just has to convince her mom that this town might just be the best thing that ever happened to them!

• ISBN10: 1534442553
• ISBN13: 9781534442559
• Publish Date: 1 October 2019
• Publish Status: Active
• Publish Country: US
• Publisher: Simon & Schuster
• Imprint: Atheneum Books for Young Readers
• Format: Hardcover
• Pages: 256
• Language: English

Reviews

[Sam@WLABB]

Rating: 4.5 Stars

Though Ellie was diagnosed with cerebral palsy at birth, she was fiercely independent. However, after her grandfather's dementia progressed, she and her mother moved to Oklahoma, in order to care for him. As if being the new kid wasn't hard enough, she was also the only one in a wheelchair in a town lacking accessibility. Despite those drawbacks, Ellie began to settle in, and was thinking this could be her new home. All she had to do was convince her mother.

What a wonderful and heartwarming story! I adored Ellie, her wry personality, and her passion for baking. After the move, she could have opted to have a pity party, but instead, she found things to be positive about. She was making friends, she was getting stronger with the help of her very capable gym teacher (Hutch), and she was looking forward to winning the annual pie baking contest. I loved Ellie's attitude, and respected, that her biggest qualm was not that she had CP, but that she had lost a lot of her independence, due to the lack of accessibility.

Ellie was by far the star of this story, but she had a great supporting cast of characters. Her friends, Cora Lee and Bert were wonderfully unique and interesting, but I really loved them, because of what incredible friends they were to her. They embraced Ellie and accepted her, when she had previously spent most of her school life on the outside looking in. It was exciting to see her form these bonds, and I loved their plan to help her "stay forever".

I also thought Ellie and her mom shared a special relationship. Her father had left, when she was young, so it was really only her and her mom. Mom was a bit overprotective, but it came from a place of love, and I think Sumner did a beautiful job showing how difficult it was for her mother to strike that right balance of mothering with the autonomy a child Ellie's age craved.

I can promise you, that at the end of this book, you will have a warm heart, a smile on your face, and a craving for baked goods.

*ARC provided in exchange for an honest review.

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