Cannonball Read 17

Sticking It to Cancer One Book at a Time

Marvel Female Super Heroes: a primer

Marvel: Fearless and Fantastic - Female Super Heroes Save the World by Sam Maggs, Emma Grange, and Ruth Amos

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Our household is deep in super hero fandom but our actual knowledge is kind of sketchy, as it’s a mismash of cartoons from different eras and the various movies.  Because of this we are more familiar with DC female super heroes (Wonder Woman, Supergirl, Batgirl, etc.) and knew only a few Marvel female supers.  But that has been changing as we have found Ms. Marvel and Squirrel Girl comics and now the Captain Marvel movie.  We’re excited to learn about more female supers that fight […]

Gorgeous graphic novel with a dragon, a maiden, a warrior, and kites.

The Last Dragon by Jane Yolen (author), Rebecca Guay (art)

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 The Last Dragon is a beautiful book to hold.  Colors are muted and layered, nothing is a single flat shade.  Lighting has been carefully considered, illuminating and glowing as needed each panel.  The “maiden” is an herbalist’s daughter named, Tansy.  She is described as, “no color at all.  She seemed to blend in with her surroundings” and the artist, Rebecca Guay, did an incredible job showing this.  I also love the way Guay drew the dragon, so powerful and ferocious.  It reminds me of a […]

Am I cooling on Scalzi?

The Consuming Fire: Vol. 2 of The Interdependency duology by John Scalzi

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I have long been a Scalzi fan and am always eager for his next book.  Fortunately, he is the type of author that is able to churn out books on a regular basis which has fed my appetite for some time now.  The Consuming Fire is the sequel to The Collapsing Empire (which I really enjoyed and reviewed last year!), together they are The Interdependency duology.   However, I stalled on this book.  Scalzi’s books tends to be easy reads that can be quickly ripped […]

A boy, his canoe, and the beginning

The Book of Dust Vol. 1 : La Belle Sauvage by Philip Pullman

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I quickly and deeply fell in love with Philip Pullman’s “His Dark Materials” trilogy.  The ending of the third book has me in tears each time I read it.  However, when I heard that he was writing a prequel with Lyra “at the centre of the story”,  I rolled my eyes.  We already have three books where she is a main character.  How much could have happened to her before the start of The Golden Compass?  Then last year a fellow Cannonballer warmly reviewed it (apologies, […]

Wonderful mental health discussion in super hero comic aimed at young girls

DC Super Hero Girls: Out of the Bottle by Shea Fontana (author), Marchelo DiChiara (illustrator), Agnes Garbowska (illustrator)

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For those unfamiliar with the DC Super Hero Girls franchise the concept is that many classic DC comics characters are teenagers attending Super Hero High School, focusing on the female supers.  Another neat twist is that villains aren’t villains yet, they might be morally flexible but they are still overall more good than bad.  My eleven and seven year old daughters have been fans for several years now.  They have watched the animated shows and movies, and read two of the chapter books, but only […]

Still has exciting steampunk aerial combat but doesn’t recapture the joy of the first book

Arabella the Traitor of Mars: The Adventures of Arabella Ashby by David D. Levine

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“The Adventures of Arabella Ashby” series starts off with a bang in Arabella of Mars. The second book, Arabella and the Battle of Venus, was not as ‘romantic and dashing’ as the first.  The third, Arabella the Traitor of Mars, is a good conclusion to Arabella’s story but it doesn’t have the spark of the first book. I mentally groaned when the book started with Arabella and Captain Singh on Earth but then Arabella, once again, needs to race to the other side of the solar system, in as […]



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