#Roll with it jamie sumner professional#
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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. If she’s not writing fan letters to her favorite celebrity chefs, she’s practicing recipes on her well-meaning, if overworked, mother.īut 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.

#Roll with it jamie sumner professional#

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. That surprises some people, who see a kid in a wheelchair and think she’s going to be all sunshine and cuddles. Truth is stranger than fiction.The story of an irrepressible girl with cerebral palsy whose life takes an unexpected turn when she moves to a new town.Įllie’s a girl who tells it like it is.

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Schu, you should have asked me about the cockatoos! Would you believe me if I told you that part of the story is true? Cockatoos really did live uncaged and fancy free (and eating all the people-food they could get their beaks on) in the trailer next to my grandparent’s. When I think of childhood and summer, I think of Oklahoma.

We spent a lot of time on their back porch, talking late into the night with the zzzt of the bug zapper for background noise. Their bricked-down trailer was my favorite spot in the world. I was born and raised in Tennessee, but my grandparents, whom the book is dedicated to, lived in Oklahoma where I spent my summers and any other time I could beg my parents to take me. Tennessee and Oklahoma are both mine and Ellie’s roots. She watches her grandfather fight for the same independence that she wants as he must come to terms with what he can no longer do. As his dementia worsens, Ellie becomes, for the first time, a caretaker instead of the one always being cared for. And Grandpa is the reason Ellie and her mom move to town in the first place. Mema’s favorite coffee cup features a mouse lifting a barbell that reads: “Lord give me strength.” That pretty much sums her up: witty and tough. Also, I love how the title literally rolls off the page!Įllie’s grandparents are the reason Ellie has such a fighting spirit. She even put Ellie in clothes that don’t quite match because matchy-matchy is so not Ellie’s style. And Amy got every little detail right, from the purple racing stripes on her wheelchair to the cherry on the pie. So I wrote a story that reflected that.Īmy Marie Stadelmann’s cover illustration so perfectly captures Ellie! She’s got such a great look to her face that you can’t help but want to know her. She wants to live her own best life, like anybody would. No one wants to be the sidekick in their own story. I didn’t want this story to be about how Ellie changes all the people around her for the better. I also wanted to write a story that includes disability, but isn’t about disability. I wanted a book that was about a girl who is feisty and loves her family fiercely and finds herself in her baking and refuses to let anyone label her by what they see. He grew up in the turmoil of the ship-building. He received his name from a striped sweater he wore which looked like a bee. Sting was born Gordon Matthew Sumner on 2 October, 1951 in Wallsend, North Tyneside, Tyne and Wear, England, the eldest of four children of Audrey (Cowell), a hairdresser, and Ernest Matthew Sumner, an engineer and milkman. I wanted to write a book that would show my son and all the other kids with special needs that they don’t have to be shrunk down to their diagnosis. Sting, Soundtrack: The Emperor's New Groove.

He rolls around in his wheelchair and struggles with many of the things Ellie struggles with in the book – fighting to be known for something other than a disability, especially when that disability is so visible with the wheelchair. Jamie Sumner: My oldest son has cerebral palsy.