Thank you to NetGalley and Simon and Schuster Children’s Publishing for the advance copy of Roll With It by Jamie Sumner. Roll With It will be released on October 1, 2019. All opinions are my own.

Ellie is no nonsense and tells it like it is which surprises most people as they believe that a kid in a wheelchair is going to be all sunshine, unicorns, and rainbows. Ellie has cerebral palsy and is restricted to a wheelchair. She has no friends at her school in Nashville and hates that she is followed around constantly by an aide at school. But she still has big dreams of becoming a famous baker. Her father is struggling with Alzheimer’s leading her mother to suggest a move to Oklahoma so they can help her Mema take care of him. Ellie has to start all over in a new town and new school. Now she’s not just the kid in the wheelchair, she’s also the new girl who lives in the trailer park on the wrong side of town. Ellie feels as if this is all just a little too much for her…then she makes her first real friend, Coralee. Now that she has friends, she’s desperate to stay.

This is an incredibly sweet book about finding where you belong and realizing that not being “normal” is okay. Ellie is so lovable, and you can feel her struggles throughout the book. I love that this book features a main character with cerebral palsy who uses a wheelchair. It is rare, to find a character like this and yet it is so important for readers to be able to see and recognize themselves in the books they read. Ellie is so headstrong and while she may not be sunshine and rainbows, she is still optimistic in her own way and just as her mom fights for her, Ellie fights for what she wants as well. Like Ellie, I’m a huge fan of baking shows and loved that there was baking in the book as well. I liked Ellie’s philosophy of using baking to bring people together and represent her family. I really enjoyed this book and think it is an important book to be included in middle grade libraries ensure that as many of our students as possible are represented.

“Roll With It” has become one of my new favorite books! The story deals with Ellie, a girl who has a disability and so uses a wheelchair. She is an absolute gem, an unstoppable force for positive change. The story is told in first person, and describes the life transitions Ellie experiences when she and her mom move in with Ellie’s grandparents. The book has some quite humorous moments, and also some poignant ones. Some really significant issues are addressed, such as disabilities, changes that come with aging, single parenthood, middle school friendships and traumas. The plot moves along well and keeps the reader engaged throughout. Characters are well-developed, and each one of them experiences changes and growth throughout the story. The situations are realistic and described in a way that helps readers visualize the action and situations. While this book is written for middle school aged kids, adults would also fall in love with Ellie.

I received this book from NetGalley and the publisher in exchange for an honest review. The opinions expressed here are entirely my own.

A little rushed in pacing, and I felt that some of the secondary characters could have used a little more depth and focus, but overall a sweet story capturing both the normal and uncomfortable aspects of being a young person with CP. I appreciated that the narrative did not sugarcoat the lasting nature of Ellie's CP or her grandfather's Alzheimer's, while nevertheless avoiding making either condition entirely terrifying or the totality of their lives and personalities.

Roll With It has a determined and strong female lead. I love Ellie's tenacity and her ability to persevere in spite of the challenges her disability brings her. I felt Ellie's frustration, happiness, and embarrassment as if I were there with her. This book is an excellent choice for an elementary classroom read aloud to build compassion and understanding for those with a disability.

The fact that Ellie's in a wheelchair doesn't stop her from having big dreams to become a professional baker one day. She has a strong personality, but she wavers a bit when she and her mom move to take care of her sick grandfather, and she is the new kid at school, in a wheelchair no less. Then she makes some friends and things start looking up, and she tries to convince her mom the decision to move isn't so bad after all.

This meaningful story will tug at your heartstrings. It's narrated by Ellie a girl who loves to bake, who has CP, cerebral palsy, and who rolls through life in a wheelchair. She hates having an aid at school who's supposed to help her with everything, even going to the bathroom. When her mom moves them to Oklahoma to help care for her grandfather, even though she's from the so-called wrong side of the tracks, she makes friends with other trailer park kids -- the first friends she's ever had. It's a sweet story about taking risks, the importance of finding your tribe, and growing up. I appreciate that the author skillfully shows readers that kids in wheelchairs are just like everyone else only with different challenges such as things like accessibility (where your chair can go) and getting dressed.

I loved that Roll with It is a book about a girl who has a disability, but it’s not ABOUT her disability. Ellie is a multi-faceted character with a fantastic voice the middle grade lit community needs to hear.

I am so thankful to @NetGalley and the publisher that I was able to read this book. It was just beautiful. A story of acceptance, dealing with change and persevering when things are hard. Ellie’s relationships with her family and friends are so real. I can’t wait to share this heartprint book with my students

I loved this book--I couldn't put it down. I loved Ellie, and I loved her family, her two friends, and Hutch! I don't come across too many books where the main character has a disability and I love it when I find one that is so full of heart. It was helpful to see the challenges that Ellie faces on a daily basis, and how she feels about the things she can and cannot change. I love how she worries more about her grandpa than about herself, and how she loves her family fiercely. And I love how much of a "normal" tween she is and that this makes it okay to be not normal, which is really the norm, lol. The other thing I loved was how they treated the challenges of loving and caring for a person with dementia. As the daughter of someone who passed away from dementia, this really made me cry. I also appreciated the fact that they shared how her grandpa felt in his more lucid moments about what he was dealing with. The only flaws to this book is that I wish they had done a bit more with Bert and the ASD in terms of Ellie and her friends growing in understanding of what it's like to be him. They touched on it, which I appreciate it, but I think it would have hit it out of the park if they had developed that part just a bit more. Still, I will still give this book 5 stars because I think it's a huge step in the right direction and because I couldn't put it down. I hope to see more books like this!

Thanks to NetGalley for the ARC in exchange for an honest review.

This is from an advance review copy for which I thank the publisher. The publisher requested that this not be published until a month before publication (which is October 1st), but there is already fifty reviews published on Amazon-owned Goodreads and a bunch of them elsewhere, so frankly I don't see the point in withholding mine any longer.

This one is about this pre-teen girl with cerebral palsy, and since the author has a child of her own with this condition, she speaks with knowledge about it. Due to the illustration on the cover, I had mistakenly thought it was a graphic novel at first glance, so I was somewhat surprised to discover it was a text novel, but that's fine. It was still an interesting and fast read because it engaged me always.

There were some issues with it - often with parts of a story that seemed to be opening up concerning other characters, only to be abandoned because the focus was so squarely dead-set on Ellie. It was a first-person voice, which is typically not a good idea in my book, and so in a way it explained the somewhat selfish perspective, but on the other hand, it still did feel selfish here and there, which is precisely my problem with first person voice. In this book it was not as bad as some I have read, so I was able to get by that and focus more on the story, but the blind self-focus was quite honestly an irritant at times.

Ellie is twelve and was a premie when she was born which is why they think she has these issues, and right at the point where she gets to come off her seizure meds, her mother's father is developing distinct signs of dementia, so she and mom (dad is not, of course, in the picture) move miles from home to live with grandma and help out with grandpa. This means, of course, that she's the new kid in school and has to start over again in the friends market, but Ellie has more on her mind than just that. Her CP is a constant companion, never letting her forget that she's different from most other kids she meets, but when she meets two other kids at school who are different in their own ways, she realizes she has already found her friends.

Ellie's grandparents live in a trailer park and nice as it is, it's a 'wrong side of the tracks' kind of a deal, so initially Ellie feels she has problems piling up faster than she can handle them, but none of this gets in the way of her ambition to be a baker, which is her primary dream. She tries new recipes constantly, and bemoans her failures, but she's always thinking about them in terms of how she can fix what went wrong. That doesn't mean she has no successes. Far from it!

I think it would have been nice to twist it a bit and make it mom who left to find a new partner leaving dad with his ornery daughter, but this author went the traditional route, so dad left and now has a new family and really isn't in the picture. The way this was written made it seem to me that he might put in an appearance at some point, or maybe even come back into his daughter's life, but he never really does. At one point, after Ellie has an episode requiring hospitalization, her mother is about ready to give up on project 'help grandpa' and head back to their old life, and this brings the fight out in Ellie, because she has changed her mind about this place and refuses to leave.

There was one part of the novel which felt wrong, or at least odd to me. We have a letter here and there which Ellie has supposedly written to some well-known baker or other asking them a question or complimenting them on a recipe, and these to me were neither here nor there, but I didn't think too much on them until a point where Grandpa has a serious episode himself. He might have died and I wondered whether or not he might have been intentionally putting himself in that position because he considered himself a burden, but this particular event was pretty much brushed-off as though it were nothing. The next thing I read was not Ellie in the hospital worrying over him, but a light-hearted letter to a baker about a recipe! That seemed cold and out of place to me.

Also for me the ending was rather lax, not really an ending at all, but then life isn't always neatly-packaged and its episodes don't really have a beginning, a middle and an end in the way a prim and proper three-act play has, so this kind-of worked. Regardless of that, the story was engaging and made me want to read it, which is a good thing for a middle grade novel, some of which I've been disappointed with of late. I think this tells an important story and it certainly kept me reading to the very end. I commend it as a worthy read.

Very well written! Perfect for readers who loved Wonder. I wish there had been a little more depth to some of the relationships between characters. Otherwise, a great contemporary middle grade read about trying to fit in.

I give this book 3.5 stars. The story is about Ellie who is a young girl with cerebral palsy who is wheelchair bound. Ellie has spunk. It is the best word to describe her. She dreams of being a famous chef and writes letters to some of her favorites at the beginning of many chapters. When Ellie and her mother move to Oklahoma to help take care of her grandfather who is suffering from Alzheimers, she has to deal with educating a new area to who she is. She doesn't want to be seen as her illness, she wants to be seen as a whole person. She winds up with two new friends, Coralee and Bert, and they definitely don't fall into the category of "normal." While Coralee is completely okay with that, Ellie would like more than anything to be normal and has to learn that its okay to just be yourself. When her mother wants to take Ellie back to Tennessee where the school is more prepared to deal with her illness, her friends fight back to keep her in Oklahoma. This touching book shines the light on CP, Alzheimers, and being in a wheelchair. A moving story for middle grade readers.

3.5 Love the cover, great title, and good representation of an individual with CP dealing with the often awkward and all-too-many times nonexistent accommodations provided. I enjoyed Ellie’s voice which sounded just snarky enough to be a preteen. She an her life struggles came across as very real. The depiction of Alzheimer’s and how different loved ones react was very convincing. My only real issue was the saccharine ending where everything wrapped up just a bit too neat and tidy. Even Ellie’s absentee dad comes around and seems to make a convenient but unfortunately unrealistic change of heart.

5 stars. I simply loved everything about this book. I devoured it in 2 sittings. I am a big fan of Sharon Draper’s Out Of My Mind and read it aloud every year. This book reminds me of it, but definitely has its own personality. In true middle grade book fashion, there is more than one problem. All of the characters are complex and interesting. This book would make an excellent addition to my classroom library. It would make a great read aloud for my grade 3 students. I just loved this book.

Roll With It was an incredible book with a main character who has a disability. For those that liked Wonder, this is a great follow up read.
Ellie is more than just a girl in a wheelchair. She is a girl who speaks her mind, has family challenges and wants to find a true friend. Moving to her grandparent's trailer park provides her some unique opportunities (and challenges) that she takes head on. Ellie never lets her disability get in the way of what she wants.
Sumner did an excellent job writing these characters and their individual identities. She understands and relates to these characters in a real way that makes them that much more believable and easily connected to the reader. I think readers need this book. I think teachers need this book and I think parents need this book. Keep writing Jamie!

She wants to be a professional baker, but she must get through middle school, a sudden move to live with her grandparents, and a mother who wants to protect her from everything. Baking is Ellie's normal because she can do it independently in her wheelchair, and it is the one thing that she can share with her classmates at the new school. This story can help young readers to better understand the people around them with different abilities.

I love that this book has a girl with CP as the main character. Her struggles and triumphs felt so real, as did the dramas playing out with her grandfather's health. I was rooting for Ellie, and I especially loved Coralee as the odd-ball best friend. There were hints of sarcasm in the dialog that detracted from the characters for me. With so many sweet and endearing moments, sarcasm watered them down and lessened the power of the moment.

I had a lot of conflicted feelings when reading Roll With It. I think that's probably the intention behind the author, as Ellie lives with a lot of conflicted feelings -- feelings about her own disability, about her grandparents, about her friendships, about her parents. On the surface, there is the lighter story about Ellie finding friendship and baking the best pie. There are fun moments and silliness and shared stories between new best friends.

But below the surface, there is the story about what it means to have a disability, what it means for the world to accommodate or not accommodate, what it means when illness or disability (in this case, her grandfather's dementia) may mean that you cannot live safely at home. I worried about the grief and pain that Ellie experiences due to her disability when I first read. It's not that those feelings aren't real. I am very sure they are, especially in a world that so often leaves people with disabilities behind. But I worry that the image in our media is already saturated with "disability sucks" and not enough with "disability is part of life". However, I find that Ellie's friends and the other pieces of the story come together to balance that narrative with the narrative of "I'm Ellie, I have CP, and I am going to live my best life." The two combined are a major source of mixed feelings, which accurately represents being a teen who is different. I remember that well from my own teen years.

I think both pieces of the story are important. The lightness of the story and the quest to bake bring a fullness to Ellie's character that would not exist were the story solely about her disability. One of the marks of a good book is that the character with a disability is given agency and the ability to make their own decisions. Ellie is not a prop for her friends to feel better about themselves. She is herself, completely, and that is what I loved.

Ellie is a typical middle school student struggling with life - an overprotective mother, an absent father, and a grandfather who is descending into Alzheimer's. She also happens to have been born with cerebral palsy and is confined to a wheelchair. When her mother decides to move back to Oklahoma to support her mother, Ellie is nervous about being the new kid whom no one pays any attention to and has to navigate not only her disability, but class struggles about being from "Trailerland" -- the trailer park community on the edge of town.
The authenticity, raw voice of Ellie stayed with me long after I finished the book. The interludes of writing to famous bakers (and her absentee father) lent another layer into what Ellie was thinking and how she dealt with all of her challenges. This book was excellent, with memorable characters I wanted to spend more time with, especially Coralee and Bert. I hope that we get another peak into this world as the characters are well-written and have more stories to be told. This is an easy must-have book in your middle grade library!

This book was really good! I only wish it was a little longer, I would be interested to read a sequel.