Cannonball Read 18

Sticking It to Cancer One Book at a Time

Oh God, I’m Discoursing (Mac Barnett’s MAKE BELIEVE)

Make Believe by Mac Barnett

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Mac Barnett is one of my favorite picture book authors. My favorite book of his, The Important Thing About Margaret Wise Brown, is one of my favorite picture books period. I reviewed it here for this very reading challenge! So I eagerly preordered my copy of Make Believe, his first book for adults, a book about the craft of writing for children. I got tickets to see the launch event of his book tour, a conversation with Jeff Kinney at Kinney’s indie bookstore in Plainville, MA. […]

That Rumpelstiltskin is my name

Rumpelstiltskin by Mac Barnett and Carson Ellis

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Do you like fairy or folk tales? Do you like pure telling of said fairy tales with a small change? And do you like Rumpelstiltskin? Or at least the story, it is a little hard to like Rumpelstitskin. And if you answered yes to any of the above, you should read Mac Barnett’s version of the story. It is the story we know: king meets a miller, who brags about how awesome his daughter is, the king is greedy and wants the spun gold, the […]

Does Santa Celebrate Christmas?

Santa's First Christmas by Mac Barnett

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Santa’s First Christmas by Mac Barnett and illustrated by Sydney Smith is not a new idea (how does Santa celebrate/does Santa celebrate Christmas), but the way they present it is fun and clever. Maybe it was not WOW but I chuckled. After all, if the elves won’t let Santa eat the cookies for You-Know-Who who comes tonight, HOW will they get eaten?  You see, one Christmas Eve the elves decide (after many years of watching Santa work all year, work all that one night, sleep […]

Unicorns and cats and other stuff

Unicorn Crush: Another Phoebe and Her Unicorn Adventure by Dana Simpson

The First Cat in Space and the Soup of Doom by Mac Barnett and Shawn Harris

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I like the series Phoebe and Her Unicorn by Dana Simpson. Now, I don’t like every book or even every “joke” but I like how Phoebe is a loveable (frankly) dork, that is way relatable, even as an adult. When I found an online reader copy for book 19, Unicorn Crush: Another Phoebe and Her Unicorn Adventure I was intrigued. It had been awhile since I had read one, so figured it was time. Now, there isn’t anything really “new” to talk about, Phoebe is […]

Caaaat iiiiiiiiinnnn spaaaaaaace (and rats and queens and robots and computers….)

The First Cat in Space Ate Pizza by Mac Barnett and Shawn Harris

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The First Cat in Space Ate Pizza by Mac Barnett and illustrated by Shawn Harris is a fun but bad kids jokes read. There are puns, fun, pizza, moon dust, and poetry writing/quoting worms to name a few things that this Instagram started story has. Barnett and Harris decided to take a cat (who has the great line of “meow”) through a story set on the moon. The cat is sent by some Earth scientists and generals (with interesting colloquialism) and is to stop the […]

New York Times Book Review told us:

Just Because by Mac Barnett

I Miss My Grandpa by Jin Xiaoling

The Famer by Abadia Ximo

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New York Times Book Review told us a few months back what their 67th annual list of Best Illustrated Children’s Books for 2019 was. I picked up one or two here and there and today I found myself reading three. My “like” of Just Because by Mac Barnett comes from Isabelle Arsenault’s illustrations. They are simple, with a lack of a traditional color, but the details are far from simplistic. The story (a child asking all the questions even many adults want to know) is […]



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