Cannonball Read 18

Sticking It to Cancer One Book at a Time

An interesting concept, but I was still confused at times

Dead Wednesday by Jerry Spinelli

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I’m not sure how I feel about Jerry Spinelli as an author.  Some things I like, Stargirl for example, and some are a bit too weird, like Hokey Pokey.  Dead Wednesday has a bit of both, although it feels more like Stargirl.  I do have some lingering questions that I know will never be answered, though.   Dead Wednesday is an interesting concept.  The overall idea is that for one day, every eighth grader gets the name of a teenager who died during the past […]

How others see you and how you see yourself can be very different

Stargirl by Jerry Spinelli

Love, Stargirl by Jerry Spinelli

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Stargirl Jerry Spinelli   I didn’t read Jerry Spinielli growing up, which I guess might seem odd because he was writing books for my age group.  I read one of his middle grade books a few years ago, but this was the first one aimed at teens.  I’d heard about it, and there’s a movie now, so I figured I would give it a shot.   I’m not sure when this book is supposed to take place.  We know where, the fictional town of Mica, […]

But what about Penn?

Crash by Jerry Spinelli

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One night, having had some milk tea right before bed (wrong decision) and also reading The Underground Railroad past bedtime (a good decision), I could not sleep.  I’m not sure why, but my heart was beating too fast and I felt anxious.  Maybe it was the tea.  So I went to the kids’ bookshelf and picked up a book I had not yet read to maybe distract me and calm me down. John “Crash” Coogan is a typical boys’ boy.  His parents are busy working […]

Is this creepier because I’m reading as an adult?

Hokey Pokey by Jerry Spinelli

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When I first started reading this, I did not like it.  I almost passed it off as a loss entirely. The thing that turned me off was the language.  It reminded me of the words that the BFG used, and the story in general interested me from the summary, so I pressed on.  The BFG used strange words because he never went to school, and the children in the story are very young, some younger than school age, I suppose.  And I noticed that the […]



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