Cannonball Read 18

Sticking It to Cancer One Book at a Time


This read is younger than his others (or I’m assuming as I haven’t read them) but still not for really really young

Leo da Vinci: Renaissance Kid by Richard Ashley Hamilton

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If you like stories about, or at least a modernization of Leonardo Da Vinci’s story, you just might like Leo da Vinci: Renaissance Kid by Richard Ashley Hamilton. Of course, things are totally fictionalized (or so one would assume, but perhaps it is set in an alternative reality?). The language is completely of today with actions to match (fist bumps, calling stepfather Tony).  Now, maybe it is not the best book, but for certain it is a fun one that I will try to find […]

Sun reigns; desert shapes

Sundust: (A Caldecott Honor Book) by Zeke Peña

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The minimalistic text and illustrations of Sundust: (A Caldecott Honor Book) by Zeke Peña  packs a punch. It is a “you experience it by what you bring to the table” book. Therefore, no two people read the same book, and even no two readings by the same reader will be the same book, either. The siblings of the story leave the comfort zone of their home, community, safety, and wander into the desert. Here they not only see things you can’t find in society, you are […]

Picture it, Haiti, 1930s

When the Mapou Sings by Nadine Pinede

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When the Mapou Sings by Nadine Pinede is a romantic telling of a young girl learning her real place in the world through a perhaps lesser-known piece of history. A bit fanciful at times, and the ending a bit too convenient, but overall well done. A solid 3.5 for the rating and I will be looking for more by this author, but that might be awhile as this is their debut prose poetry novel. Lucilles’s (the narrator and heroine of our story) journey seems as […]

So Erman and Beck… Can we talk?

Loving, Ohio by Matthew Erman and Sam Beck

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Did I like Loving, Ohio by Matthew Erman and Sam Beck (illustrator)? I really do not know. I was talking to a librarian at the local library and they asked me if I liked it. They had a copy and read it a while ago and since we have some similar tastes in books they were interested in my opinion. They said they liked it, I said I was not sure. It had a lot of emotions and we talked about pieces of it, the […]

Mary was a little ogre, little ogre, little ogre ….

How to Be a Proper Ogre by Kelly Dipucchio and Janie Bynum

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The book How to Be a Proper Ogre by Kelly Dipucchio and Janie Bynum (as illustrator) will come out in June 2026. I read it via an online reader. At first I was not sure I would like the book. I mean it was pretty obvious that the ogre baby that was going to be born (note: mom, dad, other readers of the book you might have to explain babies do not come out of the muddy swamp, but ogre babies do) and they were […]

And it’s Good Good Leroy um… White. Goodest ghost in the whole darn greenhouse

Leroy Has Something to Say by Emily Rosenthal and My Phuong Thai

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The picture book Leroy Has Something to Say by Emily Rosenthal and illustrator My Phuong Thai is a book that made me have a warm happy. Lately not a lot of books have made me feel warm happy. And that is okay. I mean, I am an adult and can handle adult subjects, but sometimes I need to tone the doom and gloom down to a mild roar. And after reading Leroy I was able to have a happy warm feeling.  The cover is super […]



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