Cannonball Read 17

Sticking It to Cancer One Book at a Time

Great art tells the truth and that can be dangerous

The Genius Under the Table: Growing Up Behind the Iron Curtain by Eugene Yelchin

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Over the summer BlackRaven reviewed this book and I immediately recognized the name of the author. Eugene Yelchin illustrated/co-wrote one of my favorite books, The Assassination of Brangwain Spurge, and BlackRaven’s review made The Genius Under the Table sound too good to pass up. And indeed it is! Eugene Yelchin was born and raised in the Soviet Union, and The Genius Under the Table is a memoir of his childhood in Leningrad, a childhood marked by secrets and repression. Yelchin was born in the mid-1950s, […]

Behold the communication device of the future!

How It Works: The Telephone by Ladybird Books

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CBR14 BINGO: Series, because this book is part of the Ladybird “How it Works” series published in the 1970s. I never pass a Little Free Library without checking out what’s on offer, and one day a few weeks ago I struck gold. Never has one person’s trash become such a treasure. Thanks to Ladybird Books, I was about to learn about how telephones work, or at least how they worked in 1972. This book begins with some history of the telephone and why we need […]

This Is My Childhood

This Is Paris by Miroslav Sasek

This Is London by Miroslav Sasek

This Is Rome by Miroslav Sasek

This Is Venice by Miroslav Sasek

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Cbr14bingo Series As mentioned in my previous review, I have been a Miroslav Sasek fan since childhood, and I think my own interest in language, history and travel can be traced back to the books in his This Is series — a collection of travelogues for children with delightful drawings and fascinating information. Sasek covers the sublime and mundane with a view to what might most interest a child, and in doing so he made the world, in all its diversity, seem an exciting place […]

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 […]



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