Cannonball Read 18

Sticking It to Cancer One Book at a Time


Join the CBR18 Book Bingo Reading Challenge—Now Underway!   

Prose, poems and stories

A Bird in the Air Means We Can Still Breathe by Mahogany L. Browne

by Leave a Comment

While there are a lot of new titles out there, I needed to catch up on some older titles. Books, I keep “meaning to read” and never get around too. I picked up A Bird in the Air Means We Can Still Breathe by Mahogany L. Browne. I thought it was a book in verse, but it is more short essays and diary entries. Or as if someone is interviewing the narrator and they are just replying to questions.  Still, it was short and figured […]

Too many elements at once

Strange Bedfellows by Ariel Slamet Ries

by Leave a Comment

Strange Bedfellows by Ariel Slamet Ries is in one word, odd. But not in the usual sense of things. The story is straightforward: a person is coming to terms with the changes in their lives, the fact they are not like their siblings as they are the “normal one” (ie: does not have powers) and is trying to deal with headache and heartaches. But there are several places where things fall short of being “smooth” and go into the odd. First, the pages are crowded. […]

I recommend BINGO and this book

The Last Time We Spoke: A Story of Loss by Jesse Mechanic

by Leave a Comment

cbr17bingo Rec’d: Grief stories are not new, but each is unique to that person. The main thing I came away with from reading The Last Time We Spoke: A Story of Loss, is that the author (Jesse Mechanic) is human: selfish, loving, scared, fearless, angry and hopeful. They are both a reliable and unreliable narrator as they are telling the story from their eyes and over a 20 year period. The art is tone setting and allows us a peek into the mind of someone […]

The grandfather, the boy, the guitar and the song

The One About the Blackbird by Melanie Florence

by Leave a Comment

Bring the tissues when you read The One About the Blackbird by Melanie Florence and illustrator Matt James (read via an online reader copy, due later October 2025). This is a bittersweet story of the love of a grandson and grandfather and how the tables turn as time goes by, but music always pulls them together. The story is about how a young boy is always surrounded by music. One night he tells his grandfather he, too, wants to make music like his favorite song […]

Get A LOT of boxes of tissues

Yumi and Monster by Kam Redlawsk

by Leave a Comment

Get your boxes of tissues and then you can read Yumi and Monster by Kam Redlawsk. Due in September 2025 I read this via an online reader copy. And while I am curious how the finished copy will look, I am not sure I can read this bittersweet picture book. Yumi is a little girl who loves to play, but both her parents and the doctors say that will change. One day she is given a cane to help her walk (only we don’t hear […]

Our Universe

Sophie Shares the Stars by Heather Smith and Catherine Petit

by Leave a Comment

Sophie Shares the Stars by Heather Smith and Catherine Petit is an interesting book due to the different layers it has. First, it is an adoption story. Sophie has lived with “”My Michael” since she was three. And this is why she calls him what she does and his mother “Our Julia.” But the second level is he is a “real” parent as he does the things all good parents do, takes care of her when she is sick, helps her clean up messes, and […]



Help Our Mission

You can donate to CBR via:

  1. PayPal
  2. Venmo