Cannonball Read 17

Sticking It to Cancer One Book at a Time

Blancaflor and all the sh*t wives have to do

Blancaflor, The Hero with Secret Powers: ​A Folktale from Latin America by Nadja Spiegelman and Sergio García Sánchez

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Blancaflor is a folktale with Spanish and Latin American roots from a category of folktales called “Girl helps the hero flee.”  High John the Conqueror is an African-American version you may have read in Virginia Hamilton’s The People Could Fly. In this type of folktale, a man ends up being captured by a devil or magician, and has to complete a series of impossible tasks. But the devil/magician’s daughter falls for the hero, and helps him complete the tasks and escape with his life. TOON […]

Last of the Lumberjanes

Lumberjanes: End of Summer Adventure by Shannon Watters, Kat Leygh

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So it turns out the Lumberjanes series has reached its conclusion with volume 20: “End of Summer Adventure”. This series has had ups and downs and I think the conclusion is a little mixed. On the one hand, the questions that really need answering are resolved. For example, what’s up with Rosie, what’s really going on in the forest around the camp, and what’s the spooky bad thing that got released a volume or two ago. But then again, the actual reveals are kind of […]

Holiday Break Comics Reading Reviews

Why Is Everybody Yelling? by Marisabina Russo

Crumbs by Dante Stirling

Messy Roots: A Graphic Memoir of a Wuhanese American by Laura Gao

Cheer Up!: Love and Pompoms by Crystal Frasier, Val Wise, and Oscar O. Jupiter

Will Eisner Reader by Will Eisner

Master Keaton Vols. 2 and 3 by Naoki Urasawa, Hokusei Katsushika, and Takashi Nagasaki

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The plus side of sitting around for a week of vacation is that I get a lot of comics reading done! I was lucky enough to receive a lot of interesting books for the holiday. Below are some pocket reviews: Why Is Everybody Yelling? This is a graphic memoir about Marisabina Russo’s childhood growing up in Queens in the late 1950s and 1960s. Her Jewish mother had converted to Catholicism to marry her father before their divorce, and then moved to NYC to raise her […]

STEP.

Dragon Hoops by Gene Luen Yang

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This was very wholesome. I have been a fan of Gene Luen Yang’s work for a while now, and I try to read all of his graphic novels (I have given up on his superhero comics work; there is too much of it). So when the Read Harder Challenge said I had to read a nonfiction YA comic, I was excited to finally be able to fit this one in. Dragon Hoops is a memoir of Yang’s time shadowing the Bishop O’Dowd High School basketball team […]

“Olive’s not a hundred dollar bill. There are going to be people in her life who don’t like her.”

Act by Kayla Miller

Clash by Kayla Miller

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I continue my slow acquisition of this series through random bookstore visits with Act and Clash. The series follows Olive as she learns various important lessons in middle school about friendship and standing up for what’s right. In Act, Olive finds out that some kids are unable to go on field trips because their parents can’t afford the extra cost. She decides to run for student council and this causes some turmoil in her friendships and requires her to learn how to get her message […]

You Will Feel Better If You Just Read the Darn Thing

Reckless by Ed Brubaker

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Sometimes, I just wait too long, sleeping on books, making excuse after excuse about why I won’t finally pick up something I’ve wanted to read for years. Who knows why I (and apparently other readers are) this way? There’s probably some psychological reason. Ed Brubaker’s Reckless series is right up my alley: a disaffected 70s domestic Cold Warrior doing odd crime jobs in the 80s? Yessir. I should’ve read this at my earliest possible convenience. But I prefer prose to graphics, liking to sink into […]



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