Cannonball Read 17

Sticking It to Cancer One Book at a Time

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 […]

An adorable graphic novel series

Zita the Spacegirl by Ben Hatke

Legends of Zita the Spacegirl by Ben Hatke

The Return of Zita the Spacegirl by Ben Hatke

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I am super happy that I picked up this series.  Ben Hatke is the author of one of my favorite picture books (Julia’s Home for Lost Creatures) and I got my copy signed at the New York Comic Con last year.  (He’s super nice, by the way!) He asked if I had read Zita yet, and I told him I had not, but would put her on my TBR list.  And then I found out that this year’s Summer Reading theme in our library is […]

Oh moon, oh stars, You heal the languor of the souls and minds…

Seven Shakespeares, Volume 1 by Harold Sakuishi

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I downloaded this manga on a whim and it really paid off! Seven Shakespeares by Harold Sakuishi has a unique arc – depicting Shakespeare’s Lost Years between 1585 and 1592. As Sakuisi notes, in 1585, “We have a young man (with children) from a small village who had received no education sufficient to be a man of letters…and then we have the greatest poet of the age…” – so what happened? The prologue centers on the enactment of Hamlet and the political powers for and […]

X-Men Teens Fight Some More!

X-Men Blue - Toil and Trouble (Volume 2) by Cullen Bunn

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Weak collection of X-Babies stories. I want to care about this – I really do! It just always seems like nothing ever matters in these books. People die until they are needed and then miraculously survive/reincarnate/clone/whatever. People are evil until they have a change of heart and then go back to being evil. It’s all just so frustrating. Writer Bunn pushes his wooden characters around until the chapter ends and it’s all so angsty and unsurprising. Hank (Beast) finally learns the problem with his magic […]

Kill Your UltraTelevision

X-Men Gold - Mojo Worldwide (Volume 3) by Marc Guggenheim & Cullen Bunn

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This graphic novel collects a crossover between the Gold (Adult) and Blue (Teen) X-Men teams as they battle against interdimensional entertainment entrepreneur Mojo. Once again on the hunt for ratings, our villain destroys a section of NYC to trap our heroes in an ever-escalating battle against current and classic foes. There are deaths until there aren’t and our heroes are losing until they deus ex machina themselves out of another jam, defeating and exiling Mojo to our planet, cut from his feed. Erstwhile Blue Team […]

A graphic memoir about pregnancy, but worth reading even if you don’t want to ever be pregnant.

Kid Gloves: Nine Months of Careful Chaos by Lucy Knisley

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I always feel the same way when I finish a new Lucy Knisley book. It’s so weird to have followed her since the very beginning of her career (through a stroke of luck, I’ve followed her blog from the beginning, before she published a book, because a friend also followed her), to essentially watch her life progress without having spoken a single word to her. (This is especially true since I started following her on Instagram after her son was born. She’s been posting lots […]



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