Cannonball Read 18

Sticking It to Cancer One Book at a Time


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The more serious New Year Story

New Year (a Lunar New Year Book for Kids) by Mei Zihan

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New Year (a Lunar New Year Book for Kids) has a mature theme. Even the description of this book from the publisher uses words that set the tone of the book. It says it is a “moving…cride Coeur” and “dislocation is countered by acceptance…” and “Chinese diaspora.”  Huh? I just wanted a nice book about the Chinese New Year. I mean, it is a nice book that Mei Zihan has created, but well over the head of most picture book readers. I went farther along […]

Daisy, Dad and a Motorcycle

My Papi Has a Motorcycle by Isabel Quintero’

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My Papi Has a Motorcycle is a good father and daughter story that is based on Isabel Quintero’s own experiences as a child with her father and driving around the city they called home. Quintero brings together the past (the races they had on what is now the main street), present (the dog chasing them, and their favorite shaved ice place closed) and future (a cart that sells shaved ice). The sense of family and community is loudly presented. It is also boldly presented with […]

If you are different from a person everyone agrees is wonderful, it means you are somehow wrong.

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This was a tough one, emotionally. One True Thing is the story of a brilliant young woman “with her whole life ahead of her” who is guilted by her controlling and emotionally-arrested father into leaving her life behind to come home and care for her dying mother. And it covers so much ground in a very gentle but sad way: gender roles, parenting, family dynamic, literature and poetry, agency, friendship, romance, and ultimately, euthanasia. At the very beginning of the story, Ellen tells us that […]



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