Cannonball Read 18

Sticking It to Cancer One Book at a Time


Join the CBR18 Book Bingo Reading Challenge—Now Underway!   

From civil war to safety

Stepping Stones: A Refugee Family’s Journey by Margriet Ruurs

by Leave a Comment

While the story presented in Stepping Stones: A Refugee Family’s Journey, is fantastic it is the art that really blew me away. It is an experience book that you must experience on your own, without any real background, to fully understand the delicateness of it all.  Margriet Ruurs found the artwork of Nizar Ali Badr online and found the artist after a lot of twists and turns. Long story short (you can read the story in the book), they collaborated. And Stepping Stones was born. […]

Time to tell a tale

The Moon from Dehradun: A Story of Partition by Shirin Shamsi

by Leave a Comment

cbr14bingo Time Level 2      Picture book are interesting. If you have a fiction story, well, that can go into any format (picture book, novel, verse). But if you have a non-fiction story or based on a true story and/or event, a picture book is not always my “go to” thought for a subject.  After all, picture books are usually aimed at ages five to eight, therefore, how do you talk about the displacement of Indian and Pakistani peoples when the two peoples have […]

Make Samosa, Do Good in the World

The Kitchen without Borders: Recipes and Stories from Refugee and Immigrant Chefs by The Eat Off Beat Chefs, Siobhan Wallace, Penny De Los Santos

by 6 Comments

I love food. I love flavor. While there are individual ingredients and dishes I don’t care for, I have yet to meet a cuisine I disliked. I love people and learning their stories. I especially love when people are sharing something about which they are passionate. The Kitchen Without Borders ticks a lot of my boxes. I received an arc from NetGalley in exchange for an honest review. Eat Offbeat is a catering company in New York City started by and employing immigrants and refugees. […]

Trying to find a past that is not yours

The Best We Could Do: An Illustrated Memoir by Thi Bui

by Leave a Comment

The Best We Could Do: An Illustrated Memoir by Thi Bui is an emotional story. It is hard to digest all that is presented. On the surface is a story of being an immigrant, but also a child who remembers little of the journey that made her and her family immigrants.  It is a graphic novel that is about becoming an adult who finally learns about her past, the past of her family (as individuals (her parents) and as a family unit). And finally, she learns […]

One of the Untold stories of World War Two

Under the Broken Sky by Markio Nagai

by Leave a Comment

I was taught that if writers have a negative comment about what they are reviewing, they should start with a positive comment. However, I am going to be a rebel and start with the negative: If I have one complaint about Under the Broken Sky by Markio Nagai it is that the language is too modern. The contemporary voice of the narrator occasionally took me out of the (historical) moment, making me backtrack to get back to Manchuria mid-1940s. Now that is over, the good […]

One of those books where everyone reading finds something else

What Is a Refugee? by Elise Gravel

by Leave a Comment

What is a refugee?  We get a simple, but informative, answer to that question in Elise Gravel’s picture book, What Is a Refugee?  You find out why people leave their homes, the feelings they have and what could happen to them while trying to find a new home. While not too in-depth, there is much covered. Therefore, this might not be for the very young reader/listener. Yet, due to its format, it is aimed at younger children. Therefore, know your reader and their ability to […]



Help Our Mission

You can donate to CBR via:

  1. PayPal
  2. Venmo