Cannonball Read 17

Sticking It to Cancer One Book at a Time

Headed to the Moon

Rocket Beams, Lunar Dreams by Chiara Colombi

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Rocket Beams, Lunar Dreams by Chiara Colombi and illustrated by Scott Magoon is due in February 2025. However, I am glad I had the opportunity to read via an online reader’s copy. The book’s theme is not new, but told in a way that even I learned a few things and I am terribly excited to put this on teacher and parent radars. The idea is about envy and jealousy. Rocket is ready to go to the moon. She can’t wait! Except at the last […]

Boldly Going Where No Woman had gone before (Well, that was the Soviet Union, but the US had firsts, too)

Astronauts: Women on the Final Frontier by Jim Ottaviani

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Astronauts: Women on the Final Frontier is not just a book about the Women of Space (the ones that inspired: calling Nichelle Nichols. And the ones that took the ride: calling Sally Ride. Sorry, must do one bad pun) but how they got there and what happened once they were. We see both the men and women who boldly went where no one went before. We see those who broken color and gender lines. We see the inner workings of training, the ships themselves and […]

Let me play among the stars

Star Dust by Emma Barry/Genevieve Turner

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Official book description: Houston, 1962   Anne-Marie Smith wanted normal: a loving husband, two beautiful kids, and a well-kept house. But when she catches her husband cheating, she decides that normal isn’t worth it. Now in a new city with a new job, she’s trying to find her new normal—but she knows it doesn’t include the sexy playboy astronaut next door.   Commander Kit Campbell has a taste for fast: fast cars, fast planes, and even faster women. But no ride he’s ever taken will […]

A very straightforward biography of a noteworthy woman.

Sally Ride: America's First Woman in Space by Lynn Sherr

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Turns out I didn’t know very much at all about Sally Ride. I mean, what I knew about her was very limited, and half wrong. I knew that her name was Sally Ride, and that she was the first woman in space (she wasn’t, she was the first American woman in space; the first woman was cosmonaut Valentina Tereshkova, who Sally once met covertly). So this book was very interesting for me, just in terms of learning about this fascinating woman, even though the writing […]

Good night, sleep tight, don’t let the aliens bite

Good Night Solar System by Adam Gamble and Mark Jasper

Good Night Astronaut by Adam Gamble and Mark Jasper

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Adam Gamble, and Mark Jasper have created two more board books in the “Good Night” series. This time they deal with a popular subject for many children: space. With the help of Andy Elkerton on illustrations, Good Night Solar System gives planets a turn at helping a space-crazy child to sleep. The same repetitive text slowly builds up to one big goodnight for the solar system, lulling the child (hopefully to sleep). If not, you can try again with Good Night Astronauts and with illustrations […]

Overall an amazing alternate history but what I really appreciated was the portrayal of the main character’s anxiety

The Calculating Stars: A Lady Astronaut Novel by Mary Robinette Kowal

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Mary Robinette Kowal seems to lean towards alternate history in her speculative fiction writing.  The Glamourist Histories re-imagines the regency era with illusion magic.  Ghost Talkers creates a WWII in which spiritual mediums talk to recently dead soldiers to get information on battles.  In The Lady Astronaut novels, Kowal has dreamed up an alternate timeline where a gigantic meteorite strikes the Atlantic just off the East coast of the United States in 1952, destroying much of the Eastern seaboard and annihilating most of the US government.  Recovering from […]



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