Cannonball Read 18

Sticking It to Cancer One Book at a Time


I should save this for a bingo or something like this, but I gotta tell you about the book that made me cry

We Are Pan by Andre R. Frattino and Yasmín Flores Montañez

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A little over a year ago I read Tokyo Rose – Zero Hour by Andre R. Frattino and illustrator Kate Kasenow. I gave it a rating of four. When I was looking for my review from 2025, I found another review that was from 2023 (if you haven’t guessed, I came late to the party) on here that was also a four. I mention this other book because not only is it a great book and should be promoted when it can, Frattino is the […]

Coming of age during the Cuban Revolution

How to Say Goodbye in Cuban by Daniel Miyares

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Cbr17bingo Border (leaving Cuba’s borders is dangerous, entering the US boarding is difficult) While a tense story, How to Say Goodbye in Cuban by Daniel Miyares, is also a delightful one of overcoming the adversity of the times. Though immigration stories are not new, the author makes this based on real events (his own fathers journey from Cuba to the States) fresh. This is a relatively unknown story as I have not seen a lot of stories that were set so much in Cuba with little […]

“Maybe all I need is a purpose.”

Singing With Elephants by Margarita Engle

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11-year-old Oriol wants to go back to Cuba. Ever since her grandmother died, she’s felt lost at her Santa Barbara, CA home. School is difficult, her older sister has less time for her since she got a boyfriend, and the only place she is truly happy is helping her parents at their veterinarian clinic. This clinic is no ordinary vet: her parents are specialty vets, assisting with wild and unique animals. In a show-biz state like California, they have a lot of work. One day, […]

And I thought my dad had some CRAZY recipes

Old Clothes for Dinner?! by Nathalie Alonso

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Magaly loves her grandmother (newly living with her family) from Cuba. She loves her grandmother’s Cuban dishes. She loves speaking Spanish with her grandmother. But when she asks her grandmother what is for dinner one day, she gets the answer of “ropa vieja.” Which she understands to mean (in her decent, but second language, Spanish) Old Clothes for Dinner?! And since she cannot find her favorite sweater, nor her brother his favorite striped shirt (loved and worn so much there are holes in them) well, […]

Well-behaved women seldom make history

Rima's Rebellion: Courage in a Time of Tyranny by Margarita Engle

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CBR15Passport Book I own Rima’s Rebellion: Courage in a Time of Tyranny is an interesting book. First, it is prose poetry and while that is usually a good thing for me, I am not sure this was the best format for the subject. Second, it is confusing what age(s) it is aimed for. The tone of the book is for a middle-grade reader (at least aged 10 and up), but the subject matter is more mature. If this was Margarita Engle’s first novel, that bump […]

Havana Nocturne: How the Mob Owned Cuba & Then Lost it to the Revolution by T.J. English

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No doubt about it: T.J. English is one of our great gangster chroniclers. Here he takes on a crime story with an added degree of difficulty: the mob’s role in Cuba’s casinos just as Fidel Castro was ascending to power, changing the island (and, frankly, American politics) forever. I know next-to-nothing about the Cuban Revolution so take that for what it’s worth; my competency in fact checking English’s work here is not up to a high standard. Still, I felt like English did a great […]

https://cannonballread.com/2022/06/havana-nocturne-how-the-mob-owned-cuba-then-lost-it-to-the-revolution-jake/



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