Cannonball Read 18

Sticking It to Cancer One Book at a Time

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This in’t about adoption

Mother Nature by Jamie Lee Curtis, Russell Goldman and Karl Stevens

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SOME SPOILERS and possible triggers (but not as many as are in the book). Sometimes I wonder if people like something because they are “supposed to.” We are “supposed to” like a story about environmentalism. We are “supposed to” like something because the character(s) are of a minority (in Mother Nature by Jamie Lee Curtis, Russell Goldman, and illustrator Karl Stevens they are Native, two characters are queer, and at least two other people are of color). But that does not mean the book will […]

The Navajo Lens

Shutter by Ramona Emerson

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I have always pursued good character-driven crime fiction. Yes, plotting is important and necessary to a good story but as I’ve said many times, I need a reason to care about what’s going on. The less I care about the characters, the less I’ll care about what’s going down. This is why whodunits rarely do it for me: they’re too focused on the mystery to make me care about who killed who. Shutter is not a tightly-plotted novel and that might bother some readers but I was so […]

This is the biography review

Gifts from Georgia's Garden: How Georgia O'Keeffe Nourished Her Art by Lisa Robinson

Jimmy’s Rhythm & Blues: The Extraordinary Life of James Baldwin by Michelle Meadows

A Grand Idea: How William J. Wilgus Create Grand Central Terminal by Megan Hoyt

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I was into biographies as a kid. Yet, I didn’t have as many selections as we have today. Mostly because only so many were made, only so many were allowed due to age limits, space and only so many my schools and libraries could afford. Yet, one thing that has stayed the same throughout the years, is we tend to have the same people. We have Amelia E. Or Helen Keller. Or Dr. M. L. King. Or the hottie of the moment (Swift, Styles). Therefore, […]

Hanging with my pals

Otis & Peanut by Naseem Hrab

A Bone for Bo: Painting with Georgia O’Keefe by Joan Waites

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Friendship is a fun concept. Who are friends? What are friends? And what can you do with friends? And there are all types of friendships, therefore all types of answers. And in Otis & Peanut by Naseem Hrab and A Bone for Bo: Painting with Georgia O’Keefe by Joan Waites, we find two different types of friends and two types of stories.(Both titles read via online reader copies.) Hrab’s story is about Otis & Peanut. In this first volume, there are short stories where we […]

Finding Home

Yossel’s Journey by Kathryn Lasky

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Yossel’s Journey seems like, at first blush, that it will be a typical Jewish family immigrates to America. And while the characters of Kathryn Lasky’s latest picture book (due in September 2022), leave Russia due to the pogroms of the 1880s, and stop for a spell in New York where things are familiar (houses brush up against each other, you can smell the food your neighbors are cooking), they do not stay. They travel by wagon to the Southwest where they run a trading store, […]

Here There Be Giant Catfish Monsters

A World Below by Wesley King

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When Mr. Baker takes his sixth grade class to the Carslbad Caverns for their end of year field-trip, he assures them they’ll find awe and adventure. Turns out they find a little too much of both. Wandering the cavern’s depths, they get caught in an earthquake that sends them deeper underground and the students find themselves split up, teacherless, and lost in the middle of the earth. As they try to find their way back, they will encounter unrecognizable wildlife, conquer their own fears, and […]



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