Cannonball Read 17

Sticking It to Cancer One Book at a Time

So, I took this book with to a Dr appointment to read in the waiting room…

Notes from a Sickbed by Tessa Brunton

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During a long weekend (I had to take a Monday off for a doctor’s appointment) I read two memoirs and one non-fiction graphic novel on loneliness (which I had been working on for weeks).  I started Notes from a Sickbed by Tessa Brunton before I went to my doctor’s appointment and brought it with me. The considerate person in me felt it was probably not the most appropriate read to read there, but the smarty pants in me was laughing my pants off at the […]

The grandfather, the boy, the guitar and the song

The One About the Blackbird by Melanie Florence

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Bring the tissues when you read The One About the Blackbird by Melanie Florence and illustrator Matt James (read via an online reader copy, due later October 2025). This is a bittersweet story of the love of a grandson and grandfather and how the tables turn as time goes by, but music always pulls them together. The story is about how a young boy is always surrounded by music. One night he tells his grandfather he, too, wants to make music like his favorite song […]

Get A LOT of boxes of tissues

Yumi and Monster by Kam Redlawsk

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Get your boxes of tissues and then you can read Yumi and Monster by Kam Redlawsk. Due in September 2025 I read this via an online reader copy. And while I am curious how the finished copy will look, I am not sure I can read this bittersweet picture book. Yumi is a little girl who loves to play, but both her parents and the doctors say that will change. One day she is given a cane to help her walk (only we don’t hear […]

“Miss, you have a jellyfish in your eye”

The Jellyfish by Boum

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cbr16bingo Dun-Dun (dread of the medical condition our main character has) What I expected from the cover of The Jellyfish by Boum (translated by Robin Lang and Helge Dascher) was not what I got.  I got my physical copy of the book soon after it came out, but it took months to get to it. Then a weekend came, I tripped over the box that I had put it in (moving things around) and decided it was time to clean up things. And when I […]

One little girl and a big wish

Rivka's Presents by Laurie Wallmark

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It is 1918 and Rivka cannot wait to go to school. But she is told the night before, she must stay home as her father has the flu and her mother needs help taking care of her younger sister, while she works. The Lower East Side of New York City comes alive with how one plucky young girl finds a way to get the education she needs. She trades chores for reading and math lessons. And when her father is finally well, all her hard […]

When AIDS crashed the party

The Other Pandemic: An AIDS Memoir by Lynn Curlee

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CBR15Passport Different genres (Nonfiction as memoir)   Holy Flying Monkeys!  The Other Pandemic: An AIDS Memoir was not what I expected. My first thought was, “Um…do we really need a book about AIDS? Didn’t we already “do that?” But then I realized two things, first it was a memoir and not a factual book (my bad) and second, especially as I got into it, I realized that yes, we really do need this book. This is not a book about AIDS, but about Lynn Curlee […]



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