Cannonball Read 17

Sticking It to Cancer One Book at a Time

Each word clicking into place as if he were making a puzzle out of glass

The Lifters by Dave Eggers

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cbr11bingo:  Readers Choice (swapping in the COLLECTION square) Twelve-year-old Granite Flowerpetal doesn’t love his name, even though his father named him Granite to grant him strength. He tries to rebrand himself as “Gran” and while it does take on, he quickly has second thoughts. But his new identity is only one piece of his jumbled up life.  His parents, seeking new work for his father, have moved them to the Flowerpot family hometown and house, in a town whimsically named Carousel after the craft of […]

Do you believe in Magic?

The Secret Garden by Frances Hodgson Burnett

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Cbr11bingo Youths I’m not sure I ever read this century-old classic of children’s literature when I was a kid, but I can understand why readers have loved it over the decades. It’s got everything: orphans, woodland creatures, an immense mansion on the moors of Yorkshire, and lots of secrets! And the overall message is a timeless one that really can’t be repeated enough — mental health and physical health are closely related and spending time in the natural world is good for the soul. The […]

Middle book syndrome? Or just me?

The Golem's Eye (The Bartimaeus Trilogy, #2) by Jonathan Stroud

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I read the first book in this series a couple of years ago and liked it, but I never got around to finishing the series. Probably should have read it closer together . . . This was a perfectly serviceable follow up to The Amulet of Samarkand, and honestly I think my ‘meh’ reaction to it is mostly on me. The only real criticism I have of the book is that it was too long. This is supposed to be children’s/middle grade book, and it’s […]

“When the mist rises, and the smiling man comes walking, you must avoid large places at night.”

Small Spaces by Arden, Katherine

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Ollie hasn’t been much of a people-person, but since her mother died the only solace she can seem to find is in books.  On a bike ride home from school, she comes across a woman sobbing by the lake, trying to talk herself into throwing an old black book into the water.  On a whim, Ollie steals the book and discovers within its pages a strange and spooky old story about the Webster family and their tragedy brought on by a sinister “smiling man.” The […]

I spent New Year’s Day in Hogwarts.

Harry Potter and the Philosopher's Stone (Harry Potter, #1) by J.K. Rowling

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First of all I have read this book more times than I can count, literally. I know I’ve read this first one at least twelve times because that’s how many copies of it I own, but that is a gross underestimate because many of those copies I have read multiple times (especially the battered paperback I still have from 1999). I also used to re-read every year, and every time a new book in the series came out, so I’ve read this one the most. My OCD […]

Me and the littles review The Worst Witch

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We have family in England that sometimes send the children British books that I hadn’t really known very much about; in the last few years they sent us The Worst Witch, but it hadn’t really caught the kids attention. I knew that it had been a television series and that there were several books, but wasn’t super familiar with the series as well. It seemed like a good candidate for us to review together, after offering to read it aloud to my littles. I quite […]



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