Cannonball Read 17

Sticking It to Cancer One Book at a Time

My childhood #Gateway into the genre I love most

The Black Cauldron by Lloyd Alexander

The Castle of Llyr by Lloyd Alexander

Taran Wanderer by Lloyd Alexander

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Bingo Square: Gateway Bingo #1! Red/Gateway/Fresh Start/Cannonballer Says/Money I have loved fantasy since I can remember. I don’t actually remember when I started reading it, but I credit it to my deep and abiding love for Lloyd Alexander’s Prydain Chronicles. Although I have no vivid memories of the first time I read it (aside from one shocking moment in The Black Cauldron), I reread the series regularly throughout my childhood and my teenage years. I loved them every time. Aside from The Book of Three, which […]

Lloyd Alexander was definitely a fan of cats

Time Cat: The Remarkable Journeys of Jason and Gareth by Lloyd Alexander

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Growing up I adored Lloyd Alexander for the Prydain Chronicles and the Vesper Holly series.  Fun side note, I suggested Vesper as a name for our second daughter because of loving Vesper Holly and how well Eva Green carried it in Casino Royale but it was nixed by my SO. Time Cat floated around in my awareness but for some reason I never picked it up.  Perhaps because the copies in my library had an atrocious cover.  The one on the right would definitely have […]

The giant cat and realization of love are what drew me in years ago, now it’s the lessons in identity that stand out more

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The Prydain books were the next fantasy series I read after being introduced to the Chronicles of Narnia, and I read and re-read them from middle school to college multiple times.  Over the past couple of years I have been slowly re-reading the Chronicles of Prydain aloud to my now 10 year old daughter, one book a year has been the pace as we space them out with other books.  When we first sat down with The Castle of Llyr I recalled it as being my favorite […]

Deserving of Its Newberry Honor

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Last year my daughter read and did an oral presentation on The Book of Three, first volume of The Prydain Chronicles by Lloyd Alexander.  To help her with the project I re-read it and reviewed it for Cannonball 8.  I read aloud to her at bedtime and her most recent choice was book two of The Prydain Chronicles, The Black Cauldron.  Re-reading these books as an adult has been an eye opener to the craft of Alexander’s writing.  Previously unnoticed seeds are planted in this book that don’t […]

The Book of Three: the best of old-fashioned YA fantasy

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The first book I read (well, finished reading) in 2017 was one I have read countless times before. Perhaps, in that sense, it should not count. But this time was special. This time, I read it to my little sister, who was around the same age (9) I read it for the first time almost twenty years ago. She loved it, and I–who have always found a beautiful magic in this book–loved it more than I ever had before. (That’s saying something, as it was […]

The Book of Three and Revisiting Old Friends

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After finishing The Chronicles of Narnia, the first three Harry Potter books and starting “Miss Peregrine’s Home for Peculiar Children”, only to discover we couldn’t renew at the library due to the waiting list, my 8 year old daughter wanted new fantasy to read.  I handed her “The Book of Three”, first volume in the Prydain Chronicles, by Lloyd Alexander and off she went to be completely absorbed in the story and declare she would use it for her oral book presentation. The Prydain Chronicles […]



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