Cannonball Read 18

Sticking It to Cancer One Book at a Time


Join the CBR18 Book Bingo Reading Challenge—Now Underway!   

And I for one welcome our new feathered overlords

The Story of Birds by Steve Brusatte

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Like a lot of other elder millennials, I got very into birdwatching during the pandemic lockdowns, but I’ve always been interested in birds. I remember the first time I saw a bird and wanted to know more–a scarlet tanager at a nature center when I was a kid. In a time before cell phones, I couldn’t just look up what I’d seen. I had to describe it and my parents helped me find it in our Audubon’s Birds of North America guide. After that I […]

Do the Dino

The Dino Door by Josh Funk and Renée Kurilla

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The online read The Dino Door  by a favorite author of mine, Josh Funk, was enjoyable, but did not  WOW me. I do like the very end with the silly image that gives a fourth wall break, in one of the pictures on the bedroom wall of the child, so that boosts the overall simplicity, but getting there was not my thing.  And when I say simple I mean simple as there are maybe a dozen or so words on the pages total. Writing a […]

Best book of 1998?!

The Decision by K. A. Applegate

Megamorphs 2: In the Time of the Dinosaurs by K. A. Applegate

The Departure by K. A. Applegate

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It’s possible that the best book I’ve read all year is a thirty year old Animorphs book. This whole batch of books is a lot of fun, but book 19 is next level. Book 18, The Decision, is an Ax the Andalite book, and it’s quite good. I think I mention this in an earlier review, but one crazy sci-fi element of the Animorphs books comes to morphing animals that are smaller than oneself. If you, as a human, morph into a tiny cockroach (yes, […]

You’re a poet and you don’t write about it that much

Dino Poet : A Graphic Novel by Tom Angleberger

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Education, CBR17 Pie Chart Challenge Learning poetry in a fun, simpler manner is a great way to introduce kids to the genre. And you can do that in Dino Poet : A Graphic Novel by Tom Angleberger. I would have liked to have seen more emphasis on poetry not needing to rhyme, but overall it is a clever book with enough humor to keep kids interested. Currently available, I read via an online reader copy. Now, I might not purchase a copy for myself as […]

“You could call T. Rex the James Dean of dinosaurs: it lived fast and died young.”

The Rise and Fall of the Dinosaurs: A New History of a Lost World by Steve Brusatte

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This, friends, is a dinosaur. I believe Pesto’s ancestors would be confused by him, but that’s the beauty of nature. It’s super weird and always doing unexpected things. This book manages to impart a lot of information about the evolution, time on earth, and extinction of (most) dinosaurs while at the same time being very readable and fun to consume. At one point the author uses the phrase “crow-sized weirdos with wings on their arms and legs” to describe a species of dinosaur that differed […]

Two books. Two different adventures.

Campingland by Ame Dyckman

Team Unihorn and Woolly #1: Attack of the Krill by Alexis Frederick-Frost

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I follow Ame Dyckman on X (formerly Twitter). I think she is a hoot and a holler and most of her books follow that concept. They might not have her blue hair (or pink or yellow or …) but they do have spark and sizzle. And Campingland (illustrated by James Burks) does have spark and sizzle… and a skunk, a few squirrels, fish, buggies, marshmallows, hot dogs, a beaver and a very interesting way to go camping. This is a funny and cute way of […]



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