Cannonball Read 14

Sticking It to Cancer One Book at a Time

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2 Misses, and One Five Star Hit

Lulu Faces Loss & Finds Encouragement by Danica Thurber

Forever in Our Hearts by Kristina Andrade

Home in Heaven  by Stefan Waidelich

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I don’t know about all you, my fellow Cannonballers, but I’m the go-to book person in most of my circles. I would be very upset if this were not true, in fact.  Especially when it comes to picture books, which are what I’m both most educated in and most passionate about. But this means, that a lot of times I get asked about “What are good books about X hard thing?” and – while I almost always have a few essential recommendations for every given […]

But what about Penn?

Crash by Jerry Spinelli

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One night, having had some milk tea right before bed (wrong decision) and also reading The Underground Railroad past bedtime (a good decision), I could not sleep.  I’m not sure why, but my heart was beating too fast and I felt anxious.  Maybe it was the tea.  So I went to the kids’ bookshelf and picked up a book I had not yet read to maybe distract me and calm me down. John “Crash” Coogan is a typical boys’ boy.  His parents are busy working […]

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 Gaimans with Pictures

Pirate Stew by Neil Gaiman (author), Chris Riddell (illustrator)

A Study in Emerald by Neil Gaiman (author), Rafael Albuquerque (author, illustrator), Rafael Scavone (author), Dave Stewart (illustrator)

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Pirate Stew (2020) – 2 stars Meet Long John McRon, Ship’s Cook the most unusual babysitter you’ve ever seen. Long John has a whole crew of wild pirates in tow, and—for one boy and his sister—he’s about to transform a perfectly ordinary evening into a riotous adventure beneath a pirate moon. It’s time to make some Pirate Stew. This should be a fun little tale of pirates, flying ships, doughnut feasts and magical stew but it falls flat. For me, the real problem of this book […]

Books for kids, better left read by kids

Dinosaurs Before Dark by Mary Pope Osborne

Dolphins at Daybreak by Mary Pope Osborne

Ghost Town at Sundown by Mary Pope Osborne

Tonight on the Titanic by Mary Pope Osborne

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These are short, easy to read fantasy novels for children about a brother and sister who can travel anywhere a book is set via their magic treehouse. There is a little bit of subplot connecting one book to another (specifically the first 28 – yes you read that correctly – involve the Morgan LeFay missions where the mystical Morgan tasks the siblings with various errands). But my 7-year old son and I skipped books and found them readable without much confusion. Here’s a summary of […]

“Not that an asteroid crashing into our planet is a good thing, but it does put everything else into perspective.”

The World Ends in April by McAnulty, Stacy

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Eleanor Dross is getting a little weary of her life. School, as always, is terrible. She has only one friend, and while Mack is the best, she could do without everyone else ignoring her or worse.  Her grades? Let’s not talk about it. And home life, it’s fine, but nothing to, well, write home about. Her recently widowed dad is doing his best. And they have Grandpa Joe to help out too. But Joe is a “prepper” – that is to say, he’s most excited […]



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