Cannonball Read 16

Sticking It to Cancer One Book at a Time

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Yo-Yo Ma and His Gifts

The Music Inside Us: Yo-Yo Ma and His Gifts to the World (A Picture Book Biography) by James Howe

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The Music Inside Us: Yo-Yo Ma and His Gifts to the World (A Picture Book Biography) by James Howe and illustrated by Jack Wong might be one of my favorite new picture biographies. Read via an online reader copy, however, you’ll have to wait until early June 2025 for your chance to read it.  We hit the highlights of the life and times of this cellist. There are several facts in the text itself, along with extras as well. This lets the book grow with […]

Told in English and Chinese

Grandpa’s Magic Mask: A Story of Growth and Bravery in English and Chinese by Siping Wu

A House Just for Mommy: A Bedtime Story Told in English and Chinese by Dayong Gan

The Boy, the Deer, and the King: A Legend Retold in English and Chinese by Xiaochun Tang

Little Malan’s Debut: A Story of Courage Told in English and Chinese by Lumin Qian

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I do not speak a second language. As an adult, I regret not working harder on that, but I take solace in the fact that there are bilingual books out there and I can read the English part and admire the second language. Usually this is French or Spanish, but I have noticed that Chinese is taking its place. I’m not sure if the Chinese in these four books is Mandarin or Cantonese, so please let me know if you know! All will be available […]

Few things as fun as a good book or two

O.K. Is Gay: A Picture Book by Vincent X. Kirsch

Here Is a Book:  A Picture Book by Elisha Cooper

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There are few things as fun as a good book. Two of those books were found recently by me via online reader copies. The first by Vincent X. Kirsch is a contemporary story on how it is okay to be gay. And the other is a book about books. Or more accurately how a book goes from idea to your hands. I was a little skeptical about O.K. Is Gay: A Picture Book  as it was mostly starting out as “just another it’s okay to […]

Barbara did whatever she set her mind to do

Because Barbara: Barbara Cooney Paints Her World by Sarah MacKenzie

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You might have read my review of Dear Duck, Please Come! by Sarah MacKenzie and Charles Santoso and learned that I was trying to read Because Barbara: Barbara Cooney Paints Her World by Sarah MacKenzie and illustrated by Eileen Ryan Ewen instead, but a mix up with the online link brought me to the duck book. It was a nice surprise, but I still wanted to read about Cooney and was eventually able to locate another online link to the book. Therefore,  I was able […]

Not so picture-perfect

Bunt! Striking Out on Financial Aid by Ngozi Ukazu

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I looked at the cover and said to myself that I knew exactly what this book was about. Well, I wasn’t wrong, but I wasn’t right.  I guess I was on a superhero kick at the time as I felt it would have more of that element. I also thought she would have to struggle to paint/do art. And instead, she isn’t a “real magical power superhero” but our gal does perform a pretty neat trick: Getting Art Students to do the dreaded Group Project […]

“Don’t stop beginning. Begin and begin and begin. Begin endlessly—that is, without the taint of even eventual ending.”

All Things Are Too Small: Essays in Praise of Excess by Becca Rothfeld

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Literary critic Becca Rothfeld argues against the modern inclination toward minimalism, and insteads advocates embracing all the messy and irrepressible things that make the human existence so rewarding. I am this book’s target audience, because like Rothfeld I wonder if in the process of streamlining our world we have reached an unpleasantly bland and bloodless zeitgeist. I enjoy colorful and unusual clothes and furniture. I find the aesthetic of minimalism boring. I love the over the top pulp literature of yesteryears. I don’t want the […]



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