Cannonball Read 18

Sticking It to Cancer One Book at a Time


I might pick on the frogs in this review but there is an elephant too

It's Tough to Be Tiny by Kim Woolcock

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What if I told you that being small was not as bad as it might seem? In fact, it can be cool. Oh sure, we vertically challenged people might not be able to reach the average height shelf in the store and have to smile nicely to the tall gentleman for assistance, but if you were some of the animals in It’s Tough to Be Tiny you would be the cat’s meow, bees’ knees and frog of the bog! Kim Woolcock writes about the tiny […]

It’s a zoo out there

A Troop of Kangaroos: A Book of Animal Group Names by Lisa Mundorff

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How do you write a 250-word review on a book with probably less than 100 words? Very carefully! A Troop of Kangaroos: A Book of Animal Group Names (written and illustrated by Lisa Mundorff) is a clever book about names. And not just “Kathy Kangaroo” or “Sammy Sardine” or “Bob Otter.” No, I mean that a group of sardines is call a family. A bunch of kangaroos are called a troop. And a bunch of skunks are a real stench. No, really a stench of […]

“Play play play! Now now now!” say all babies!

Play in the Wild: How Baby Animals Like to Have Fun (In the Wild). by Lita Judge

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Lita Judge is at it again with Play in the Wild: How Baby Animals Like to Have Fun (In the Wild). They show us how adorable baby animals do adorable things in the wild. Each animal is given a small paragraph or two showing how play helps them grow. And how play will help them survive when they are older. Sweet illustrations that are not overly bold, but not muted either, run about the page letting us know how each critter jumps and plays and […]

For zoology and art geeks! The original Pantone collection, as used by Darwin.

Werner's Nomenclature of Colours Adapted to Zoology, Botany, Chemistry, Mineralogy, Anatomy, and the Arts by Patrick Syme

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Shout out to Ms. Was for suggesting this book to me last March! I put it on my Christmas list and Santa delivered. The full title of this petite tome is almost as long as the book itself: Werner’s Nomenclature of Colours, with Additions, Arranged So As to Render It Highly Useful to the Arts and Sciences, Particularly Zoology, Botany, Chemistry, Mineralology, and Morbid Anatomy, Annexed to Which Are Examples Selected from Well-Known Objects in the Animal, Vegetable, and Mineral Kingdoms. This delightful little book […]

In which I recommend an exceptionally good movie in place of this book

The Soul of an Octopus: A Surprising Exploration into the Wonder of Consciousness by Sy Montgomery

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Scroll all the way to the bottom for movie recommendation! Is anything quite so disappointing as picking up a book that you fully expect to be a five-star read and being met with something you can only generously call mediocre? I was so excited at the prospect of learning about octopuses, those wonderful invertebrates, that I sat down with my beloved book darts, certain that I’d want to permanently tag many interesting passages. Now a few golden embellishments stare up at me from the pages, […]

Advanced Bird Nerdery

The Most Perfect Thing: Inside (and Outside) a Bird's Egg by Tim Birkhead

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With the exception, perhaps, of the most dedicated vegan, all of us have cracked open an egg at some point in our lives: to scramble for breakfast, to make an egg drop soup, or, for those more reckless in our diet, to whip up a rich creme brûlée. Yet how many of us have ever paused to wonder about the complex mechanisms that go into the creation of the egg itself? A 19th-century abolitionist named Thomas Wentworth Higginson once said, “If required on pain of death […]



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