Cannonball Read 17

Sticking It to Cancer One Book at a Time

Pippi Longstocking meets the 21st century

Two Friends, One Dog, and a Very Unusual Week by Sarah L. Thomson

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If you are looking for a book that is Pippi Longstocking for the modern age, Two Friends, One Dog, and a Very Unusual Week by Sarah L. Thomson is the book you are looking for. If you like that clueless, tornado of a child character, you will love this early chapter book. Best for ages 8 to 10, it could work as a read aloud as well. The chapters are shorter, with a few, cute, simple illustrations (by Vin Vegel) to highlight plot points, allowing […]

One curse, one family, a lifetime of growing up

Salt Magic by Hope Larson

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Salt Magic by Hope Larson and illustrated by  Rebecca Mock is an experience book. You read it, you have an experience. Mine is different from yours, and yours is different from the third guy’s reading. Things are if Alice in Wonderland met Wizard of Oz and something else…. I can’t put my finger on it. The artwork is the main character, though we are being told the story which is narrated, in text, by a young girl in the years right after World War I. […]

Be Our Guest as your dreamer doesn’t rest

Hotel REM by Zack Keller

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When I read about Hotel REM it sounded like it was going to go in a completely different direction than what the actual graphic novel turned out to be. It also had a different feeling from the cover. And while, yes you can find some of the story out from the cover, this is a book that also is one that you should not judge it by the cover. Zack Keller wrote an interesting coming of age story. The colors and details of the illustrations […]

Dorothy Dingle: the Perfect Mother

The Tenth Mistake of Hank Hooperman by Gennifer Choldenko

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After his mother has been gone for a week, eleven-year-old Hank and his toddler sister Boo are forced to seek out the stranger listed as their emergency contact. But with Lou Ann’s help comes social workers and a new school, and Hank worries he might have made a huge mistake. I don’t read much middle grade nowadays, but I was intrigued by this book because I haven’t read any middle grade book dealing with foster care and parentification before. The author’s note about her own […]

Friends, pets and understanding

Calvin and the Sugar Apples by Inês F. Oliveira

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Calvin and the Sugar Apples by Inês F. Oliveira and a few illustrations by Vanessa Balleza is a cute story about friendship and loss. There are a few illustrations that help highlight a few points of the story. The story is a hit or miss for most people (a few might be in between, like I was, but I don’t see a lot of middle ground). Our young heroine is a girl who might be on the autism scale, or is just a bit young/naïve […]

The author and their work

A Perfect Mistake by Melanie Conklin

When You Have to Wait by Melanie Conklin

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After reading Counting Thyme by Melanie Conklin, I went on to read their A Perfect Mistake. I had wanted to reverse the reading, as I had seen an online reader copy of A Perfect Mistake ages ago, but lost my link. I then said, “Hello Library of mine. Do you have Melanie Conklin’s books?” One interlibrary loan request for each later, I had the first and the most recently published (with book four, Crushed, out in July 2024) in hand. I will go back and […]



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