Cannonball Read 18

Sticking It to Cancer One Book at a Time

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High fives all around!

A High Five For Glenn Burke by Phil Bildner

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Sixth grader Silas Wade adores baseball, and it adores him. Center fielder for his middle-school league and the heart of the team, Silas loves to boost morale with good-natured pranks, spreading love of The Sandlot (aka the greatest movie of all time), but most importantly winning games.  For his middle school biography project, Silas turns to baseball too, and knocks it out of the park with a presentation on Glenn Burke, five-tool talent of the L.A. Dodgers in the 1970s, who not only killed it […]

Two women. Two powerhouses

The Power of Her Pen: The Story of Groundbreaking Journalist Ethel L. Payne by  Lesa Cline-Ransome

Marie Curie and the Power of Persistence by Karla Valenti

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Another recent health issue caused me to have a few days off from work and I did some reading. I first picked up a few picture books as I figured I could concentrate on them. And except for one book, they were all not easy. The first two were about women of history. Women that we might not know about or know about, but not everything. The Power of Her Pen: The story of Groundbreaking Journalist Ethel L. Payne by Lesa Cline-Ransome and John Parra is […]

More work to be done

The Black Cabinet: The Untold Story of African Americans and Politics During the Age of Roosevelt by Jill Watts

The Immortal Life of Henrietta Lacks by Rebecca Skloot

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The Black Cabinet: The Untold Story of African Americans and Politics During the Age of Roosevelt by Jill Watts was our Mocha Girls Read book club selection in June. It became a very timely selection after the horrible death of George Floyd, which shone a brighter light on Black Lives Matter activism in America. As a Black woman, I was suffering from emotional exhaustion during that time. This history book actually helped put so many current things in perspective. We have come a long way, […]

Putting Black women back into the historical narrative.

A Black Women's History of the United States by Daina Ramey Berry & Kali Nicole Gross

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This was a really good book for what it was—a survey of Black women’s roles throughout 400 plus years of North American history—but the relatively small 219 page count just wasn’t enough space to really get into the sorts of details I really love when reading about history. I don’t think we can discount the impact of the purpose of the book, though, since its entire aim is to place Black women back into the historical record, and it very much succeeds in that goal. […]

Some places, you never leave the same

The Nickel Boys by Colson Whitehead

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Kicking off my CBR12 Bingo with The Nickel Boys by Colson Whitehead for the RED book cover square. A beautifully written novel about a segregated Florida reform school during the Jim Crow era. All the boys never left The Nickel Academy the same as when they arrived. The novel flashes between the present and the past through Elwood’s eyes. Each chapter gives you a lyrical moment in time. We learn about the place in pieces, flashing forward to Elwood as an adult. As soon as […]

“A civilization is not destroyed by wicked people; it is not necessary that people be wicked but only that they be spineless.”

The Fire Next Time by James Baldwin

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If we- and now I mean the relatively conscious whites and the relatively conscious blacks, who must, like lovers, insist on, or create, the consciousness of the others- do not falter in our duty now, we may be able, handful that we are, to end the racial nightmare, and achieve our country, and change the history of the world It is time to listen. James Baldwin had a voice unlike any other. He transcends country, creed, and time. His work is astonishing and terribly important. The […]



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