Cannonball Read 18

Sticking It to Cancer One Book at a Time

Give a hoot or you’ll be sleeping with the fishes

Owl Capone by Christy Ewers and Rob Sayegh Jr.

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I read and have read (and watched too many movies, television shows, plays) too many mysteries and gangster themed items. Or so it felt when I picked up Owl Capone by Christy Ewers and Rob Sayegh Jr. My first thought was Owl Capone? OH boy! This is going to be scary. What does he actually serve in his sandwich shop? Is he going to make you a sandwich you can’t refuse? And yes, there are a lot of spins of the “Capone” innuendo, with some […]

Kindness can go a long way.

La bondad brilla en la oscuridad / Kindness Glows in the Dark (Spanish and English Edition) by Gama Valle and Mrinali Álvarez Astacio

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While food insecurity is not a new subject, it is not one that is always talked about, especially in a picture book form or is not always accessible to all readers or listeners. The story La bondad brilla en la oscuridad / Kindness Glows in the Dark (Spanish and English Edition) by Gama Valle and Mrinali Álvarez Astacio (Illustrator) introduces this concept to a younger audience, but the extras at the end allow it to grow with the reader. The format, the place the story […]

Fiction That Could Unfortunately Be Nonfiction

Dear Martin by Nic Stone

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This is probably a book that will make you angry. And it should, because it is fiction that could just as easily be nonfiction. We follow high school senior Justyce during his run-ins with the police and his interactions with peers, some of whom are racist but certainly don’t think that they are. After his first run-in with the police, he decides to start an experiment to be like Martin Luther King Jr. He revisits King’s writings and writes letters to him, which is where […]

History behind “The New Colossus”

What Emma Wrote: The Woman Behind the Words on the Statue of Liberty by Ann D. Koffsky and N. Tarcan

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What Emma Wrote: The Woman Behind the Words on the Statue of Liberty by Ann D. Koffsky (Ann Diament Koffsky) and illustrator N. Tarcan   While I was not WOWed by this story, I was warm and cozy with it. It was a nice story, a good introduction to the subject and made me want to learn more about the woman who is the Emma of the title. Both the text and illustrations give off comfortable vibes The publisher’s description says “with its poetic message” […]

Poems to read

The Wanting Way: Poems (Multiverse) by Adam Wolfond

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I enjoyed what I read of The Wanting Way: Poems (Multiverse) by Adam Wolfond, but was unable to actually finish. I was not in the right mind frame for such an intense, deceptively simple story created from poems. This is a personal read as I have family and friends on the spectrum. I kept putting it off reading for that reason and I started it a few days before it was due as it was an interlibrary loan title. I could not renew it, so […]

Mary was a little ogre, little ogre, little ogre ….

How to Be a Proper Ogre by Kelly Dipucchio and Janie Bynum

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The book How to Be a Proper Ogre by Kelly Dipucchio and Janie Bynum (as illustrator) will come out in June 2026. I read it via an online reader. At first I was not sure I would like the book. I mean it was pretty obvious that the ogre baby that was going to be born (note: mom, dad, other readers of the book you might have to explain babies do not come out of the muddy swamp, but ogre babies do) and they were […]



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