Cannonball Read 18

Sticking It to Cancer One Book at a Time

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Picture it, Haiti, 1930s

When the Mapou Sings by Nadine Pinede

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When the Mapou Sings by Nadine Pinede is a romantic telling of a young girl learning her real place in the world through a perhaps lesser-known piece of history. A bit fanciful at times, and the ending a bit too convenient, but overall well done. A solid 3.5 for the rating and I will be looking for more by this author, but that might be awhile as this is their debut prose poetry novel. Lucilles’s (the narrator and heroine of our story) journey seems as […]

The stories of two young men

Hands by Torrey Maldonado

Garvey in the Dark by Nikki Grimes

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I needed a short read or two. I found two, while terribly short looking, books that also felt like they would have some “meat” to them. And those books were Hands by Torrey Maldonado and Garvey in the Dark by Nikki Grimes. I was familiar with Grimes, as they are the author of Garvey’s Choice and others I enjoyed reading. But Maldonado was new. Hands looked like it would be a boxing book. And it is, somewhat. But really what the book is about are […]

A red-headed, freckled Mexican American border kid

They Call Me Güero: A Border Kid's Poems by David Bowles

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  CBR16SweetChallenge #New (representation in my reading)   They Call Me Güero: A Border Kid’s Poems came to my attention because there was an online reader copy of the companion novel, They Call Her Fregona: A Border Kid’s Poems and I realized that while it might not need to be read in order, it might be a good idea to get this first one. Author David Bowles has a story that was new to me (after all I thought I didn’t know them, but I had read […]

Well-behaved women seldom make history

Rima's Rebellion: Courage in a Time of Tyranny by Margarita Engle

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CBR15Passport Book I own Rima’s Rebellion: Courage in a Time of Tyranny is an interesting book. First, it is prose poetry and while that is usually a good thing for me, I am not sure this was the best format for the subject. Second, it is confusing what age(s) it is aimed for. The tone of the book is for a middle-grade reader (at least aged 10 and up), but the subject matter is more mature. If this was Margarita Engle’s first novel, that bump […]

This b**ch bites

Baby Teeth by Meg Grehan

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 cbr14bingo Verse  Level 1 (prose verses)  When I first saw Baby Teeth I thought “Finally, a book that is ‘cover different’ and still eye catching.” (Or in other words, it was not “just like all the other” covers out there.) And then “Ooooh prose poetry.” (When reading I would think, “Less poetry and more ‘poetic’ though”). After finishing, I thought, “Meg Grehan. You are one weird person.” In many ways this is a sophisticated read (and at times made me feel like I was missing […]



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