Author Study: Angela Johnson

Title: The Rolling Store

Author: Angela Johnson

Illustrator: Peter Catalanotto

Picture book for ages (approximately) 5 and up

Rating: 4 of 5 stars

Summary:

This book is about a little girl and her grandfather. As he tells her stories about The Rolling Store from back when he was a little boy and very few people had cars, she creates her own little Rolling Store on a wagon.

Opinion:

This is an intriguing book. Things like this interest me. I enjoy hearing stories from a time before cars when everything moved a little slower and was a little sweeter. Of course this isn’t always true, but that’s how I imagine it. I love hearing stories from generations before, things were just so different, and Johnson turns just another story into a window to the past. It is a story about something I have never and probably will never experience, though at one point in time it was a common occurrence.  Additionally this book has a cadence similar to a grandfather speaking, whether this is purposeful or accidental is a mystery except to Johnson but either way it gives the book a life. With this book it’s almost as if instead of you reading it, it reads to you. This is a very good book and it does get me to think about what life was like back then, before big box stores and interstates, and as I’ve said before I consider books that bring me in and make me think to be good books, the difference between a good and great book to me though is critical thinking versus just thinking. This book makes me think, but not really critically. There is no point in the text were I sit and say that’s wrong, or why would that be? I do think, but it’s mainly daydreaming and fanaticizing about a time I will never experience.

The illustrations in this book are lovely. They are watercolor which adds to the dream-like atmosphere the words create. The best part is that only half the illustration takes you back in time, the other stays present and shows you what the little girl is doing for her grandfather. Without the illustrations the reader would never know this side of the story, as it is never actually mentioned. As you see what The Rolling Store from the past has to offer its long gone customers, you also see the little girl creating things to offer her future customers. It just adds a whole other element to the story.

I would most definitely use this book in my classroom. It is a lovely story that would fit well into a genre study, an author/illustrator study, or a family unit.