Cannonball Read 17

Sticking It to Cancer One Book at a Time

Transgender superhero YA.

Dreadnought (Dreadnought, #1) by April Daniels

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Danny Tozer has always known she should have been born a girl, and we know this on the first page. The first scene of this book features her hiding in an alley, dressed otherwise like a male, and painting her toenails; this is the only outlet she has as a closeted trans fifteen year old in an emotionally abusive household (her dad is a colossal asshole). But everything changes when her toenail painting session is interrupted by a superhero/supervillain fight. Dreadnought, one of the most powerful superheroes, is shot […]

The American Revolution Through Slaves’ Eyes

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Laurie Halse Anderson’s award-winning YA novels set during the American Revolution are superb. Not only does she get her history correct — with fascinating detail about daily life for wealthy and working classes, Loyalists and Patriots, city life and army camp life — but she also provides narrators whose perspectives are unique and provocative. Isabel and Curzon are slaves. Each brings a different view of the revolution and what it means for them as slaves. The three novels take the reader from May of 1776, when […]

Right in the Feels

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So anything I said about Mr. Colfer not hitting the right emotional cues in his last book have totally been remedied in the third Fowl installment.  Here I was, rolling along through this fun-loving YA series about a boy criminal mastermind and his faerie acquaintances and BOOM. First chapter Mr. Colfer shoots you right in the feels on page 10. At the risk of giving anything away, I won’t be writing heavy on this book’s plot details because you should just read it, but let’s suffice […]

This is Where it Ends

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This is Where it Ends is a story about a school shooting in Opportunity, Alabama. The school sits outside of town. We see this story from four students perspectives, and everything happens within the span of fifty-four minutes. It seemed like a normal start to a new semester, the principal had gathered the students and staff in the auditorium for the yearly speech she gives at the start of second semester. When students stand up to leave at the end of the speech, they begin […]

Son

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The final book of The Giver quartet is called Son. This book is broken into three parts, and ends up tying the quartet together. We begin with meeting Claire after she has been selected to be a birthmother. We see a new part of the community that Jonas grew up in. Giving birth is hard for her and it is decided that this is not the best job for Claire, and she is reassigned. But she wonders, what happened to her child? Nearly a year later, […]

I can’t believe the news today. I can’t close my eyes and make it go away.

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You may be wondering, hey, what does a 30+ year old song about violence due to religious intolerance in Ireland have to do with this book about the police shootings of innocent young black men in modern day America? And I’ll tell you, I’m not quite sure. But I listened to this song a lot while I was reading this book and this opening line really stuck with me. There’s been a lot of buzz about Angie Thomas’ debut novel, and all of it is deserved. This […]



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