Cannonball Read 18

Sticking It to Cancer One Book at a Time


You wish there were only lions and tigers and bears in this forest

Kerry and the Knight of the Forest by Andi Watson

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I felt as if I was reading a Grimm’s Fairytale, only nicer (even with the darker elements) by the time I finished Kerry and the Knight of the Forest by Andi Watson. There is a medieval feeling to the text. There is the “peasant” looking child, Kerry (and with flashbacks/memories his family are farmers also dressed in that peasant looking garb). And to make things a little more interesting, most of the action is shown in wordless images. It does not rely on text to […]

Battle on my Cousin!

13th Street V01 Battle of the Bad-Breath Bats by David Bowels

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There are three kids on the cover of this book. One is being carried off by a giant bat. I think it is safe to say, when one sees this, they can assume this is going to be a fantasy novel. I would even assume that it would be a fantasy mystery (after all why is there a giant bat, why are the people running and why is the girl wearing a yellow duck floaty around her waist?). And Battle of the Bad-Breath Bats, the […]

I’ve read scarier ghost stories for kids

The Family Plot by Cherie Priest

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Mrs. Winthrop is determined to get rid of her home. It is an old, Southern Tennessee beaut of a home filled with original wood stairs and rails, original furniture from when it was built way-back-when, filled with old family belongings that to the Music City Salvage team will be worth a fortune. After the patriarch of the family-run business purchases the home he sends in his team to gather the scrap: daughter Dahlia, drunk nephew Bobby, Bobby’s son Gabe, and unrelated worker Brad. They show […]

Did I mention the NOT cows????

Black Sand Beach V01: Are You Afraid of the Light? by Richard Fairgray

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Black Sand Beach V01: Are You Afraid of the Light? is a fun mystery in a traditional modern comic/graphic novel format. The spooky is spooky for the 10 to 14 crowd (slightly younger could do as well, but this is not for the overly sensitive reader as there are skeleton/zombie ghosts, a haunted lighthouse, odd looking characters who might have a live body in a bag, and um… not cows … wandering around).  But nothing is really over the top. Except, it is. There is no seriousness […]

You won’t have a ghost of a chance

Séance Tea Party by Reimena Yee

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Séance Tea Party is a tale of not wanting to grow older. Of course, this theme has been done before. However, Reimena Yee’s graphic novel is a fun way to re-introduce this idea. Lora is a “late bloomer” and when she is having a séance tea party, she gets a surprise: a girl shows up. And just because she is a ghost does not stop the two of them from becoming fast friends. The trials of growing up are done in sweet, traditional graphic novel […]

It’s a Mad, Mad, Mad, Mad…House

It Will Just Be Us by Jo Kaplan

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A knock at the door. A series of frantic knocks at the door. Yes, It Will Just Be Us  nearly starts with “it was a dark and stormy night”. Our narrator, Sam, is a down-and-out adjunct professor of archeology barely hanging onto her sanity. After a series of upsetting events, we find her moving back to her crumbling, ancestral mansion in on the edge of a foreboding Virginia swamp. The mansion is, for all intents and purposes, haunted. It’s haunted by the living specter of her […]



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