I remember this book from childhood. It was a fun story with warm pictures. I thought about this simple story for years after. In the story--- A family experiences the ravages of poverty/loss and the boy Johnny sets out on his own. While on his journey, he loses his one means of sustinence, the "Journey Cake". From there, he chases the rolling cake and a whole series of events unfold. Years later, I found a copy and realized the profundity of the story. Sometimes when you are down to nothing, it is the journey that provides you with everything you need, even a way back home. Great story for children and adults.

I have read this book and it was in the summer of my discontent. And it lifted my weary spirit as a successful and busy African Storyteller, not knowing that this was called 'burn out!'.

Through the reading of The Way of the Storyteller, I realized I had to write the way of the African Storyteller, trying to motivate African and African American children to see how great it was that they were from Africa even though the world consistently tries to convince them that this is a shame and we as Africans are backward and disorganized.

I realized why God had called me to be a storyteller and the great healing art of telling.

I wonder if Ms. Sawyer is still living?

Carroll Durodola

I did not like the book because it skip around too much between characters. I could not understand the characters. It wasn't really abour roller skating. I just wanted to read about roller skating.

I don't remember the first time I read this book or, rather, had it read to me. But I'm 24 now and I probably re-read it every 18 months or so. It's just that good.

Lucinda is one of the best characters in children's literature. She's not a beautiful girl (though you can tell she'll grow into a striking and riveting woman), but she's got an entirely generous spirit and energy saved up from a lifetime of restraint. She manages to have both entirely unique and exciting experiences that few people would (or should) ever share and to make everyday things into adventures. What's more, through the book she truly grows and changes, not any more than a girl of 10 years old should, but just enough.

Her adventures bring to life 1890s New York, both familiar as the city we know now and completely different in scale. One amazing thing, if you think about it, is that this book is set just about 15 or 20 years after the first of Laura Ingalls Wilder's Little House books, so perhaps Laura was a young married woman during Lucinda's orphan year. And yet think of the difference in the lives they lived! You wouldn't think it was the same country, even.

It's true that there are some difficult parts in this book. Lucinda does lose friends, one of them violently. But, speaking as someone with a clear memory of being read this book as a child, it's handled so as not to be traumatizing. Lucinda doesn't fully understand or absorb her friend's murder; neither did I, because it's so sensitively written that as a child you realize only that something awful has happened that you _shouldn't_ quite understand. If you tend to underestimate your children, if you want to "protect" them from being thinking people able to live fully in the world, you may want to protect them from this book. My parents thought more of me, and I'm glad of it. Lucinda has been a great friend to me.

This book is a charming book about a charming child and her adventures over a year. There is a serious and sad side to the book as well, as there is to any life, but overall the story is wonderful.