Elly has dreams of becoming a baker someday, and finds comfort in creating delicious cookies, cakes, and pies whenever the world becomes too much for her, including her overly protective mom and her absent father. So the one advantage to being in Eufaula is that now Elly can participate in the Bake-Off for the best pie held by Mema's church every year along with their fish fry and silent auction. And there's a $100 prize for the winner.
But first, Elly has to adjust to life in a trailer and a new school. And the first person she meets couldn't be more different. Coralee is a friendly, free-spirited girl with big blond hair who is on the beauty pageant circuit and she immediately invites Elly over to the trailer she lives in with her grandparents. a pit bull, and some cockatoos.
The next friend Elly makes is Bert Aikers, son of the grocery store owner. Her Grandpa had driven his car into the store, which is the event that brought Elly and her mother to Eufaula in the first place. It has been arranged that Mrs. Cowan would drive Elly, Coralee, and Bert, who also lives in the trailer park, to and from school each day.
Despite the other kids in school ignoring the three friends because they are trailer park kids, Elly finds she is enjoying living in Eufaula, realizing how lonely she had been in Nashville with no friends and just having the company of an overprotective aid all day long.
But as time goes by, and the decision is made for Grandpa and Mema to move into an assisted living condo, it looks like Elly and her mom will be heading back to Nashville. Well, not if Elly, Bert, and Coralee have any say in that decision. Besides, there is still the Bake-Off to win. Can they persuade Mrs. Cowan to stay in Eufaula?
There are just so many things I like about this book. To begin with, it isn't about a girl learning to live with CP. Elly has already accepted the fact that she has CP and will be in a wheelchair for the rest of her life. Instead, it's about a girl who happens to have CP dealing with many of the same issues any middle grader faces - being a new kid, making new friends, being snubbed by the other kids, but also being with people you like and who accept each other for who they are, doing the things you enjoy and that provide a great deal of satisfaction, and fighting to gain some amount to independence in your life. And over the course of the novel, Elly discovers just who she is and what her strengths and weaknesses are and then she rolls with it.
Elly is a great character. Even though she accepts the hand the life has dealt her, it doesn't mean she can't have some bad, frustrating, or disappointing days. Baking has become her coping mechanism and when she needs to, she will hole up in the kitchen and experiment. And while dealing with limitations and frustrations because of cerebral palsy may have matured her in some ways and made her self-involved in the past, now having friends and family around helps her mature more and to see others as individuals facing their own hurdles.
Sumner portrays the relationship between Elly and her mother so realistically, and it's not so different from most mother daughter relationships. After all, twelve is an age when kids want to be more independent and Elly is not different. Of course, her mother's fears can cause her to be little overly protective. I really enjoyed watching their relationship change and grow over the course of the novel.
Roll with It is a funny, sad, poignant novel and a book that all middle grade readers can benefit from reading.
This book is recommended for readers age 9+
This book was gratefully received from Atheneum
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