Cannonball Read 18

Sticking It to Cancer One Book at a Time

It’s history, it’s the Little Mermaid, it’s fantastic!

Skin of the Sea by Natasha Bowen

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Mix West African lore with The Little Mermaid and you get this exciting fantasy novel and the beginning of a series featuring Simidele (Simi) the Mami Wata (mermaid) who inhabits the waters around West Africa in the 15th century when the trans-Atlantic slave trade is beginning to grow. This YA novel is a combination of fantasy and fact, allowing Natasha Bowen to introduce readers to factual information about West African cultures and society as well as the myths and lore of the diverse people who […]

Friends and snow and that’s how it goes!

A Thing Called Snow by Yuval Zommer

Before We Sleep by Giorgio Volpe

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Due to new books coming out for the holiday season, picture books are coming at us from all sides! And several are quaint, sweet, old fashioned with modern twists, stories. Two of those sweet ones are A Thing Called Snow and Before We Sleep. My first thought about both were: sweet stories. My second thought: Dang these are some awesome illustrations. My final thought: Um… sorry a fox and rabbit and a fox and a mouse are not going to be “safe friends” so why […]

Happy Holliday’s With a Couple Yummy books

Jan Brett’s the Nutcracker by Jan Brett

Peyton Picks the Perfect Pie: A Thanksgiving Celebration by America’s Text Kitchen Kids

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I was mentioning to a coworker that if you wanted to count how many different versions of a story there are, he should be looking at The Nutcracker as he had mentioned he was going to count how many different versions of Charles Dicken’s Christmas Carol came in. Soon after that, Jan Brett’s The Nutcracker came onto the scene. And of course, I had to read. With a few differences (Mouse King vs. Rat King or Mouse/Rat Queen are the big differences I have noticed) […]

Knight School and War

Squire by Sara Alfageeh

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I received my copy of Squire by Sara Alfageeh and Nadia Shammas through here. I was excited to read as it was a graphic novel, but also had a look of fantasy and historical, which is a genre I enjoy. However, it was not what I was expecting. I did notice that my feelings of the book changed from “this is new and fresh” to “we do have a new voice, but I know this story.” Also, I was being influenced by having just watch […]

“A tender, lovingly crafted book about growth, longing, grief, and renewal that I want to read over and over again” (quote from Carey Pietsch)

The Tea Dragon Tapestry by K. O'Neill

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Never has a blurb on a cover so encapsulated my feelings about a book but Carey Pietsch, artist for The Adventure Zone books, has summed up The Tea Dragon Tapestry so succinctly that everything you need to know about it is right there.  If you’ve read the previous two Tea Dragon books you must read this lovely conclusion to the trilogy.  If you’ve never heard about tea dragons and the quote intrigues you, here are my reviews for the first two books, The Tea Dragon Society and The […]

November Odds and Ends

The Hot Rock by Donald Westlake

The Dark Tower by CS Lewis

Braiding Sweetgrass by Robin Wall Kimmerer

The Invention of Sound by Chuck Palahniuk

The Feathers of Death by Simon Raven

The Drowned Cities by Paulo Bacigalupi

Robot Dreams by Isaac Asimov

The Woman in White by Wilkie Collins

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The Hot Rock – 3/5 Stars A farcical kind of heist book. John Dortmunder is getting out of prision and his old pal immediately brings him a caper to work on. Together with three other specialists, the friends will be stealing an emerald from a museum that has cultural and sentimental value for two warring African nations. One of the nations currently possesses the emerald, while the other is hiring the thieves. Paid a salary, plus the promise of a large reward, Dortmunder begins to […]



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