Cannonball Read 17

Sticking It to Cancer One Book at a Time

Sweet story about the joys and challenges of friendship, identity, and privilege

Stargazing by Jen Wang

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Stargazing is the most recent graphic novel from Jen Wang of The Prince and the Dressmaker fame.  My 10 year old spotted Stargazing at San Diego Comic Con and we had to bring it home.  She read it in one sitting and then began insisting that I needed to read it.  The Prince and the Dressmaker blew me away so I had high expectations for Stargazing, and Wang did not disappoint.  Once again she explores themes of friendship, identity, and privilege. Christine Hong is Chinese American in a […]

“A tender, lovingly crafted book about growth, longing, grief, and renewal that I want to read over and over again” (quote from Carey Pietsch)

The Tea Dragon Tapestry by K. O'Neill

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Never has a blurb on a cover so encapsulated my feelings about a book but Carey Pietsch, artist for The Adventure Zone books, has summed up The Tea Dragon Tapestry so succinctly that everything you need to know about it is right there.  If you’ve read the previous two Tea Dragon books you must read this lovely conclusion to the trilogy.  If you’ve never heard about tea dragons and the quote intrigues you, here are my reviews for the first two books, The Tea Dragon Society and The […]

“Hope, because that is what we must give him, what we must give all of them. Hope and guidance and a place to call their own, a home where they can be who they are without fear of repercussion”

The House in the Cerulean Sea by TJ Klune

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It’s rare that I say everyone should read a particular book, but this is a book everyone, of all ages, should read.  TJ Klune has spun a beautiful story in The House in the Cerulean Sea.  It’s about finding one’s place in the world, learning to re-write the narrative others have placed on one’s self, that bigotry and fear can be overcome, and that acceptance can be found, starting sometimes as small as with one person to then slowly grow. Linus Baker is an investigator […]

Douglas Adams was brilliant and gone too soon

The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy by Douglas Adams

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I don’t remember the first time I read, The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy (HGttG), I suspect sometime in middle school.  I can’t tell you how many times I’ve read it since.  HGttG is probably responsible for much of my sense of humor.  When Adams suddenly passed away in 2001, I felt a profound sense of loss, he was brilliant, ahead of his time, and his writings (fiction and non) were so very funny.  Every so often it will pop into my head, “What would Adams think […]

“Guts” delivers and important message to younger readers about mind/body connection

Guts by Raina Telgemeier

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Raina Telgemeier returns to the autobiographical in Guts.  I’m late to the party on this book as my 13 and 9 year old have read it multiple times since its release in 2019.  For those familiar with Telgemeier’s autobiographical graphic novels, this is a story in which Raina is younger than in Smile or Sisters.  She’s in fifth grade and has begun having stomach troubles.  It started with a round of stomach flu going through her family and school.  But afterward Raina begins to obsess about the […]

Magical Friendship: cbr12bingo – “Friendship”

Phoebe and Her Unicorn in The Magic Storm by Dana Simpson

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“Phoebe and Her Unicorn” began as a web comic by Dana Simpson in 2012 and then a few years later became a syndicated comic strip in newspapers, that is still in active publication.  The first five books in the series are compilations of those comics.  Phoebe and Her Unicorn in The Magic Storm is the first standalone graphic novel. Phoebe is an average girl who befriends a unicorn, Marigold Heavenly Nostrils.  Together they tackle the mundane, school, to adventure, like when they solve mysteries as the […]



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