Becky Albertalli is officially not a one-hit wonder. I feel I also must note that if this book had been around when I was a teenager, I would have been 1000% obsessed with it. Like Molly, I was that girl with the hundred unrequited crushes and no idea what to do about them, and even though her body-image issues were not mine, I felt I could also relate that she had them. (Adolescence is a terrible time. I’m sure you all agree.) And just like […]
Truly, The Hate U Give Little Infants F’s Everybody (THUG LIFE)
Nearly twenty years ago, Jacqueline Woodson first tackled the same subject matter as depicted in The Hate U Give (2017) in her typically poetic and poignant style in the novel If You Come Softly (1998). It is a story of first love, an interracial one between fifteen-year-old Jeremiah and Ellie who meet at their private school. They have to deal with how society treats them because of their relationship. In the end, this modern day Romeo and Juliet comes to an abrupt end when Jeremiah is fatally shot by […]
I am Well Acquainted With Fire
If you like fantasy and strong female protagonists, you should be reading Intisar Khanani. She writes beautifully. She builds interesting and diverse worlds. Her protagonists are wonderful, believable girls. Her books are inexpensive and you should be buying them. It’s interesting to start a book knowing more about the character’s history than they do. Near the end of Sunbolt, Hitomi burned out her memory in a magical act of self defense. She recovers enough memory to know her enemy, but not her old friends. Hitomi […]
Kids making bad choices is a hard pass from me.
When I was a college student, my teaching mentors had young adult book recommendations for high school students. Let’s face it, high school English classes push classics but kids often read “easier” and more accessible picks. One of the classic young adult novels that my advisor and mentor teacher recommended was Paul Zindel’s The Pigman. I picked it up at a thrift sale and then promptly never read it until now. Sophomores John and Lorraine play a prank on an old man, and it goes […]
A family drama that left me a little cold
Family drama is a hit-or-miss genre for me, same with mystery. When I picked up Celeste Ng’s Everything I Never Told You at my community college’s book sale, I wasn’t sure what to expect. But I *was* happy to support the English department for a dollar. I have seen a few reviews around Cannonball Read, and I was interested to see for myself what the book would entail. Lydia Lee disappears in the middle of the night in her 1970s suburban Ohio town, and is […]
Not Your Grandmother’s Baba Yaga
This had been on my to-read list for quite a while thanks to many glowing Cannonball Read reviews. I actually bought a copy of it for my sister for Christmas and I tried not to let my foot tap too loudly as I waited for her to finish it. It was worth the wait. As a kid, one of my favorite book series was Ursula Le Guin’s Earthsea trilogy. I liked the way it pulled me into another world, so different from my own, but […]
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