Cannonball Read 18

Sticking It to Cancer One Book at a Time


Join the CBR18 Book Bingo Reading Challenge—Now Underway!   

The two Sophies

Tree. Table. Book. by Lois Lowry

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Lois Lowry, in my reading experience, tends to be “presentation soft, but still deals with the hard stuff. And Tree. Table. Book. does not disappoint.   Lowery deals with family, friendship, bullies, mental and physical health and coming to terms with death. Things build slowly but once the stories that relate to the title come into play (I won’t mention them as I feel it is important to learn about them when our narrator does), things really take off. But up until then, things are slow, […]

Revisiting a queer collection from my ’90s youth

Am I Blue by Marion Dane Bauer

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I picked up Am I Blue?, an anthology of “gay and lesbian” stories for young adults right around when it was published in 1994. I was in middle school, which I had entered with a new haircut that earned me a lot of accusations from more ignorant classmates. But I think this was just a coincidence; I don’t remember questioning my sexuality or gender despite those comments. I expect I either picked it up out of curiosity about the gay community, or that my mom […]

“The life where nothing was ever unexpected. Or inconvenient. Or unusual. The life without colour, pain or past.”

The Giver by Lois Lowry

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Cannonball Read Bingo Square: Minds I have owned a copy of The Giver for quite a while and it has sat collecting dust on our bookshelf reserved for the classics. My kiddo, on a whim, picked it up and when my 13-year-old picks up something that is a classic, I generally take that as an opportunity to revisit it. (See also, failed attempt to get him to read “A Wrinkle in Time.”) When I picked it up to reread, I soon began to wonder if […]

Dark secrets

The Giver: Graphic Novel by Lois Lowry

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#cbr11bingo #Award I have never read the novel, The Giver by Lois Lowry, but thought I knew the story. I had read the second book, Gathering Blue and read about and talked about The Giver. Plus, I figured I know the authors style as well. It is sweet and “happy edgy.” You know good things can happen, even when bad things are going on. Yet, when I read The Giver: Graphic Novel I was blown away. This is not just due to the story (I […]

Familiar and Strange

The Giver by Lois Lowry

Gathering Blue by Lois Lowry

Messenger by Lois Lowry

Son by Lois Lowry

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I was 11 when The Giver was published, and I remember my 7th grade English teacher, the next year, reading it aloud to my class. It was my first exposure to dystopian fiction and I ate it up. Everyone in my class had their own copy so we could follow along, and within a few years my copy was completely dog-eared and tattered, as I read and reread. At some point, having moved on to more sophisticated dystopias as I got older, it ended up […]

A Child’s Introduction to Pure Evil

Number the Stars by Lois Lowry

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I live two blocks away from a stellar children’s book store. It’s a habit of mine to visit several times a month. I enjoy keeping tabs on what the kids are reading these days (graphic novels) and which titles have staying power. The pale blue cover of Number the Stars is always on display in the middle reader section. The fact that Lois Lowry, an author born in 1937, still has books occupying prime shelf space is an amazing feat—but not surprising to me, given […]



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