Cannonball Read 15

Sticking It to Cancer One Book at a Time

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All the Rage

When Women Were Dragons by Kelly Barnhill

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I’ve been sitting here staring at a blank screen, trying desperately to figure out the words to convey the depth and urgency of my love for this book. Let’s start with: if I have anything to be grateful to the former occupier of the White House for, it is the uptick in feminist rage literature. I suppose credit where credit is due. Because we’ve been mad, I’ve been angry my whole damn life, but it’s just now I’m finding books that mirror my own simmering […]

Embarrassment, as it turns out, is more powerful than information. And shame is the enemy of truth.

When Women Were Dragons by Kelly Barnhill

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This is one of those books that I will be thinking about long after I finished it. When, in 1955, hundreds of thousands of women of all ages spontaneously turn into dragons, the government’s official statement is that the women “disappeared.” Scientists who defy the government’s gaslighting call it the “Mass Dragoning” and begin to study the phenomenon. Much of that study is driven undergound by the House Un-American Activities Committee. Meanwhile, families are left to pick through the wreckage, both literally and figuratively, of […]

Real villains

The Ogress and the Orphans by Kelly Barnhill

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As of this writing/posting of the review for The Ogress and the Orphans by Kelly Barnhill I am only halfway through. I published before finishing as I had some ideas I wanted to put down as I was/am not completely sure why this book has critics excited. It is terribly slow, and the real action does not start to take place until the middle of the book. And then, when things are about to finally happen, the orphan that meets the Ogress is asleep with […]

The lies that bind us

The Girl Who Drank The Moon by Kelly Barnhill

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Though The Girl Who Drank The Moon is apparently for youngsters, there’s a lot in here that olds will love too. On the edge of a forest, villagers leave a baby each year as an offering to the witch they’ve grown up terrified of. As far as they’re concerned, by giving up the baby’s life, they’ll be safeguarding their own for another year. Meanwhile, the perplexed witch hurries to collect the abandoned babies, nourishing them with starlight until she can find them loving families on […]

A lovely book with a beautiful cover

The Girl Who Drank the Moon by Kelly Barnhill

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4.5 stars Because tradition dicatates it, each year on a certain day, the council of elders in the Protectorate take an infant and leave it in the woods as a sacrifice to the witch. Bad things will happen to the settlement if they don’t (although no one is really clear what dire consequences there will be, because there has never been a time when they didn’t place a child in the woods). Normally, the grieving family whose child has been selected meekly go along with […]

A lovely fairy tale that came at just the right time

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I am quite sure I found a review of this book on the CBR site, and it sounded like a lovely warm book to read in what has been a challenging few weeks. It’s a Newberry Award winning young adult book, filled with emotion and magic and love. The book began much like a traditional Brothers Grimm fairytale; a village needs to leave it’s youngest child in the forest on a certain day every year, an offering to an evil witch so that she leaves […]



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