Cannonball Read 11

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Some Young Adult to close out Bingo

Enchantee by Gita Trelease

Speak by Laurie Halse Anderson

The Lady Rogue by Jenn Bennett

The Lovely War by Julie Berry

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  Four more reviews to finish catching up on my backlog. CBR11Bingo squares for I Love This (Enchantee), Award Winner (Speak), Far and Away (the Lady Rogue) and Reader’s Choice over Own Voices (The Lovely War).   Enchantee (apologies, but I can’t figure out how to accent the ‘e’) is a beautifully written young adult romance. Set in Paris during the final days of Marie Antoinette and Louis XVI’s excesses, it shows both the splendor of the rich and the desperation of the poor. Camille has been using magic to survive since the death of her parents. She has an […]

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9/28/2019 | 's CBR11 Review No:63 |

Required reading for all teens, parents of teens, or anyone who knows a teen.

Speak by Laurie Halse Anderson

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CBR11 Bingo: Youths!   This was one of those books that I had heard of but really didn’t know what it was about. I picked it up at a discount book sale based on name recognition alone; when I needed a YA selection for this bingo square, I dug it out of the TBR pile. Speak is a novel about a girl named Melinda, and picks up just as she starts her first year of high school.  From day one she is a social outcast due to the fact that she called the cops on a wild end-of-summer party a […]

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Buy the following on Amazon and help our mission to stick it to cancer, one book at a time:

  • Speak by Laurie Halse Anderson

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8/4/2019 | 's CBR11 Review No:36 |

When the Words Are Caught in Your Throat

Speak: The Graphic Novel by Laurie Halse Anderson

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Trigger warning: Rape I don’t know what to say. I loved “Speak” when I read it back in 2015. I felt for Melinda and wanted to hug her throughout the story and loved how Anderson takes a long road to showing us what happened to Melinda and how her life became unraveled before her freshman year of high school. The graphic novel does a great job with showing us Melinda in the present day and her memories of her friends and of a party that changed everything via the illustrations by Emily Carroll. The illustrations add so much to this […]

Help Support Cannonball Read

Buy the following on Amazon and help our mission to stick it to cancer, one book at a time:

We pay for our website first, and then all proceeds above and beyond those fees are donated to the American Cancer Society in AlabamaPink's name. Find out how else you can help support our mission.

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7/10/2019 | 's CBR11 Review No:157 |

“We should teach our girls that snapping is ok, instead of waiting for someone else to break them.”

Shout by Laurie Halse Anderson

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I only learned that Laurie Halse Anderson wrote her modern classic and much challenged novel Speak in response to her own rape as a young teen. But where Melinda came to art to find her voice, Anderson came to writing. Anderson writes in verse that runs the gambit of emotion and holds no punches.  It is a memoir of her full life, opening with a reflection on her father, whose severe PTSD sets the tone for her complicated home (later reflected in her YA fiction The Knife of Impossible Memory). Her rape by a classmate as a middle-school student left her […]

Help Support Cannonball Read

Buy the following on Amazon and help our mission to stick it to cancer, one book at a time:

  • Shout by Laurie Halse Anderson

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4/26/2019 | 's CBR11 Review No:27 |

This review does not do this book justice. I should have written OMG THIS IS AMAZING a thousand and two times

Speak: The Graphic Novel by Laurie Halse Anderson

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Twenty years ago, a book called Speak by Laurie Halse Anderson came out. A book about a subject we still do not really talk about today. Speak told the story of Melinda, a freshman in high school, the night she was raped and the fall-out from that. Speak: The Graphic Novel keeps to the feel and message of the novel. I was surprised at what I remembered but things I had forgotten came back and rediscovered other things. I think it has been rearranged a little bit but is still the classic I loved and still recommend. Yet, it is […]

Help Support Cannonball Read

Buy the following on Amazon and help our mission to stick it to cancer, one book at a time:

We pay for our website first, and then all proceeds above and beyond those fees are donated to the American Cancer Society in AlabamaPink's name. Find out how else you can help support our mission.

Share the post "This review does not do this book justice. I should have written OMG THIS IS AMAZING a thousand and two times"

3/29/2019 | 's CBR11 Review No:100 |

Disney said it best: “What makes a Monster and what makes a Man?” (or in this case hero and villain)

Guys Read: Heroes and Villains by Jon Scieszka

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This series rocks!  READ THEM! You need more? (sigh) Okay…… Guys Reads started around 10 years ago with Guys Write for Guys Read: Boys’ Favorite Authors Write About Being Boys. Jon Scieszka, however, is no stranger to getting boys to read. His Time Warp Trio series was his way of writing for the boys in his classroom who did not have anything to read. Flash forward a few years and Scieszka is knows for many picture books and novels, including the Guys Read series. I will say: I do not believe in “boy books” and “girl books” but sometimes, yes, […]

Help Support Cannonball Read

Buy the following on Amazon and help our mission to stick it to cancer, one book at a time:

We pay for our website first, and then all proceeds above and beyond those fees are donated to the American Cancer Society in AlabamaPink's name. Find out how else you can help support our mission.

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2/18/2019 | 's CBR11 Review No:44 |

29: An excellent adaptation of a beloved YA novel

Speak (Graphic Novel) by Laurie Halse Anderson and Emily Carroll

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When I was a sophomore in high school, I had a student teacher for English II. He read out loud at the beginning of class, which was fun and exciting—the first book he chose was Laurie Halse Anderson’s Speak. It’s been a favorite of mine ever since. Last year, Anderson teamed up with Emily Carroll to transform her groundbreaking novel into a graphic novel. I was not sure how it would turn out, but one of my former professors is a frequent contributor to a comics podcast called The Comics Alternative, and she gave it a rave review. That was […]

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6/10/2018 's CBR10 Review No:29 |

The American Revolution Through Slaves’ Eyes

The Seeds of America Trilogy: Chains, Forge, and Ashes by Laurie Halse Anderson

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Laurie Halse Anderson’s award-winning YA novels set during the American Revolution are superb. Not only does she get her history correct — with fascinating detail about daily life for wealthy and working classes, Loyalists and Patriots, city life and army camp life — but she also provides narrators whose perspectives are unique and provocative. Isabel and Curzon are slaves. Each brings a different view of the revolution and what it means for them as slaves. The three novels take the reader from May of 1776, when the British are about to invade New York, through the harsh winter of 1777-78 at […]

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6/6/2017 's CBR9 Review No:24 |


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