Cannonball Read 18

Sticking It to Cancer One Book at a Time

About BlackRaven

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I am a Professional Book Pusher. Reading is a passion, as is writing, bragging about nephews, and alligator wrestling. My first year participating was 2018. (Learn more about this Cannonballer: BlackRaven's Quick Questions interview.)

BlackRaven's Reviews:

Not the Alphabet book I grew up on

Queer History A to Z: 100 Years of LGBTQ+ Activism b by Robin Stevenson and Vivian Rosas

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Queer History A to Z: 100 Years of LGBTQ+ Activism by Robin Stevenson and illustrated by Vivian Rosas is a middle grade alphabet book that is also a landmine of wonder tidbits. The version I found was from 2024 and was still an online copy. However, it was not complete so I hope to find a finished copy sometime. The list of letters and definitions are not just A is for Activist, or M is for Marsha P (though they do make an appearance) but […]

Not-so-distant future

Identical by Leah Hayes

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Sometimes I read a book that makes me both love and hate it simultaneously. It is an emotional book that can make me ill. It is something that I both understand on a miniscule level and one where I can not understand it at all. Identical by Leah Hayes (read via an online reader, due mid September 2026) is one of those books. All my love goes to the minimal illustrations, as the story is too sad and thoughtful to think about. Things are artistic, […]

Beary cute story

A Bear Belongs: A Wildlife Rescue Story by Catherine Barr and Harriet Hobday

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It’s a little embarrassing to say that it took me from February 2026 to April 2026 to read A Bear Belongs: A Wildlife Rescue Story by Catherine Barr. Not because it is some 5,000 page book or anything. But because I forgot the name of it. It was not until a few days before writing the review I remembered Bear was in the title. So, I did a search in my emails for reader copies and found probably 20 different titles that had bear attached […]

I had a lot of clever titles for this review but none of them fit.

Exit Wounds by Rutu Modan and Noah Stollman

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Recently I was emailing a representative of a publisher my work deals with. We were talking about a book dealing with the 12 Day War between Iran and Israel that is coming out this fall. I mentioned I would like to find something that showed the other side of the story as well. I figure one should get all the information one can and you’ll probably have a better understanding of things as a whole. The person mentioned they liked Rutu Modan. However, she was […]

An odd, not so little, little book or Why even though it is the day before Easter, you should go to the libary

Bog Myrtle by Sid Sharp

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You know you have a problem when you spend five days of the week at your job behind the scenes at a bookstore, then on Saturday you go to the library for a “change of scenery.” But I guess it could be worse.  Anyway, I was browsing the shelves, thinking that I had forgotten it was the day before Easter and there would be little rabbits hunting eggs and goodies, but thankfully they were outside. I was able to just look and see what jumped […]

The Gale

The Gale by Mo Yan, Chengliang Zhu and Ying-Hwa Hu

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The Gale is a beautiful and sad story. It is also a unique story and the back story is as good, if not better, about how the inspiration came about. There was a lot of love that went into this story and creation of the book. Author Mo Yan, illustrator Chengliang Zhu, translator  Ying-Hwa Hu and adapter  Xiaoxiao Guan had their work cut out for them. This is a story that looks like it is going one way, but soon goes another. It blows around […]



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