Cannonball Read 18

Sticking It to Cancer One Book at a Time


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Six stories, one War

Survivors of the Holocaust: True Stories of Six Extraordinary Children by Kath Shackelton, Zane Whittingham and Ryan Jones

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This is a controversial start to my review of Survivors of the Holocaust: True Stories of Six Extraordinary Children by editor Kath Shackelton: Yes, I think we need stories about the Jewish experiences of the Holocaust. Yes, we need the children’s stories. And thankfully we can have survivor stories. However, we know those stories. I would love to see more stories about the other people who were persecuted as well. I want a mix of stories as I do not want anyone’s story to be […]

Wombat in a strange land

Digger, Volume One by Ursula Vernon

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If Lord of the Rings, Redwall and Haru by Joe Latham had a book baby (though I’m assuming Haru could have been influenced by this story) Digger, Volume One by Ursula Vernon would be the result. It is funny, dense, dark, mysterious, slow in parts, yet it keeps you hooked wondering what is next. It is not for young or sensitive readers, as the images are mostly “tame,” the text and descriptions are not always so. The black and white art is both positive and […]

Please, DON’T send in the clown

Hamlet is Not OK by R.A. Spratt

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As a teen (at least 13 and up), Hamlet is Not OK by R.A. Spratt and I would have been friends. This is because I, too, would have had some of the naive ideas about violence and mental health our main character has. Now, I still am not keen on violence as the solution and I understand the difficulties of mental health, but if you change Hamlet (and SPOILER, they do) you have changed practically everything that has come after that was inspired by it, […]

At least now I know where the term “Whirling Dervish” comes from

The Forty Rules of Love by Elif Shafak

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That’s the most positive thing I can come up with about this book. What a slog this was.  The plot: Ella Rubinstein is a forty year old stay at home mother to two children and a possibly perpetually unfaithful husband. She takes up a job with a publishing house to revise a novel called Sweet Blasphemy by a man named Aziz Zahara. As she reads the novel, she becomes fascinated by the story of the novel, about the friendship between renowned 13th century poet Rumi […]

“Perhaps being a Light of God is difficult when you’re in a dank box on the ocean.”

When the Angels Left the Old Country by Sacha Lamb

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I am very glad that I read this book: one, it washed the taste of The Maiden and Her Monster out of my mouth; and two, because it was compared to Good Omens and (luckily) it earned that comparison. When the Angels Left the Old Country is about a small Polish shtetl (in fact, it is so small that it is only known as Shtetl) and the angel and the demon who are chevrusas (or Talmud study partners) there. The angel (occasionally called Uriel, usually […]

Neshama would make a good name for a perfume

Neshama by Marcella Pixley

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Marcella Pixley’s poetic prose novel, Neshama, is one of those books I would have loved as a kid and good for the 10 and up crowd. However, as an adult, there were a few bumps. The themes are good: being yourself, standing up for yourself and forgiveness, but first, I’ve read several middle grade readers and a lot of books with the theme so it was a bit repetitive. That is why if you’re new/newish to the middle grade coming-of-age story it works perfectly. As […]



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