Cannonball Read 18

Sticking It to Cancer One Book at a Time


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Just because I’m physically an adult doesn’t mean I don’t like kids books.

Copy That, Copy Cat!: Inventions Inspired by Animals by Katrina Tangen

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I am an adult. Okay, I am physically an adult. Mentally I am the perfect audience for Copy That, Copy Cat!: Inventions Inspired by Animals. Or at least the part about peeking into cutouts and opening the flaps. The idea of biomimicry might be a little over my head, yet, somehow a board book introduced the subject perfectly. Due to the board book format, this might turn off some of the older readers who would be able to “get deeper” into things, but if in […]

The science behind super heroes and villains

Becoming Bionic and Other Ways Science Is Making Us Super by Heather Camlot

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The text is busy in this book, Becoming Bionic and Other Ways Science Is Making Us Super by the author, Heather Camlot. It fills the page with few pauses or at least easy stopping points. Once you start a section, you probably should finish it. The illustrations, by Victor Wong, are cartoon-like, but not in a goofy way. They are also busy, and due to having read this via an online reader copy (though it is current out), the flow of them did not work […]

The book tells you why A Vaccine Is Like a Memory, but my review is just commentary

A Vaccine Is Like a Memory by Rajani Larocca

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CBR15Passport genre (science in a fictionalized format) If you are pro or anti-vaccine, that is not important as A Vaccine Is Like a Memory by Rajani Larocca is more the history of vaccines and the way they work is the secondary piece of information. Because you can agree or disagree all you want, but that does not change the fact that in the 1770’s “this happened” or in 2020 “that happened.” Sure, you then get how a vaccine is supposed to work, how it evolved […]

Johnson isn’t all Wet

Whoosh! Lonnie Johnson’s Super-Soaking Stream of Inventions by Chris Barton

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cbr13bingo Machinery   I wanted to do another book for Machinery (an interesting interpretation actually) but stumbled on this book by accident. I had an opportunity to read and enjoy. The definition of machinery is the parts of a non-organic/non-living item all having their place and job to do and are not organic in the way my other pick was. And Whoosh! Lonnie Johnson’s Super-Soaking Stream of Inventions is the perfect definition. Inspired by an activity Chris Barton did at a conference (you learn of […]

Blow me a story

The Boy and the Wild Blue Girl by Keith Negley

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The cover of The Boy and the Wild Blue Girl did not look appealing to me. I was not in the mood for a “wild child” and the antics that makes one assume. However, Keith Negley made a picture book that I am truly impressed with. If I have one issue it is that the theme of the girl becoming a special metaphor, might be lost on the child reading crowd. This metaphor, if told, tells the whole story. But I can say that the […]

Would you like to ride in my beautiful balloon

A Dream of Flight: Alberto Santos-Dumont's Race Around the Eiffel Tower by Rob Polivka

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#cbr11bingo #TrueStory A Dream of Flight: Alberto Santos-Dumont’s Race Around the Eiffel Tower is one of those powerful books that gives you a piece of history you might not be familiar with. Though not an all-encompassing/text-book look, it is a complete and general look at the history of flight in its early years. And it also gives you the story of one person who did much to get it to what we know as aviation today. Years before the Wright Brothers, a young Brazilian man-made history […]



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