Another brilliant book told in verse (similar to those by Kwame Alexander), Long Way Down takes place in a single elevator ride over 60 seconds. I was doubtful that this could be pulled off successfully, but my god, what Jason Reynolds does here is extraordinarily effective. Will is mourning the sudden shooting death of his brother, Shawn. According to “the rules” of his neighborhood, Will must now plan to take his brother’s gun and shoot the boy who he thinks killed his brother. THE RULES […]
A really sweet YA romance
All Dimple Shah wants is to go to Stanford and become a web developer. She fights against her mother’s expectations of her, that she wear girlier clothes and make-up and find a “nice Indian husband”. When her parents agree to let her attend a web development seminar in San Francisco for the summer, she becomes more optimistic that they may in fact support her career goals. Rishi Patel loves hearing the story about how his parents met and has no problem with the idea of […]
Tugs at your heart
Ghosts is the most recently published of Raina Telgemeier’s graphic novels and also the most fantastical. Since I had read and reviewed her other three books earlier this year, it seemed only appropriate to do this one as well. While I didn’t connect to this story the way I did Smile and Drama, I did fall for the characters and the story of family, identity, and death. Cat’s younger sister, Maya, was born with cystic fibrosis, it affects her lungs and digestive system and there is no cure. The […]
What happens when you let the monster in?
Duana Taha (Canadian writer and producer) often says variations of, “Give them what they need, not what they want”. Our Dark Duet, sequel to This Savage Song, seems like it was a case of Victoria Schwab following that advice. I wanted this book to be something else, instead it was the story that needed to be told because of the setting and characters. In my review of This Savage Song I said it, “is an urban fantasy inspired by the classic two houses divided shtick of Romeo and Juliet.” […]
This is why your children were returned to you shoeless, jacketless, covered in mud, and full of fantastic stories.
Many of you fellow Cannonballers read this one and you folks are not ambivalent about it. It appears to be a like it or leave it situation. I gotta say, I thought it was tremendous. This is a modern tale that pokes fun at Seattle, Microsoft, progressive schools, helicopter parents and impersonal technology that allows us to outsource our lives. Elgin, Bernadette and Bee live in an upscale Seattle neighborhood. Elgin’s job at Microsoft affords them an affluent lifestyle but they live in a dilapidated former […]
Faerie court intrigue at its finest
Of course I want to be like them. They’re beautiful as blades forged in some divine fire. They will live forever. This book by Holly Black is the first in a new YA series, The Folk of the Air, set in the treacherous High Court of Faerie. I haven’t read anything by Ms Black previously, but I’ve been in a reading slump for a few months and this book looked promising when I saw it in the hot titles section at the library. The first […]
- « Previous Page
- 1
- …
- 59
- 60
- 61
- 62
- 63
- …
- 118
- Next Page »