Cannonball Read 17

Sticking It to Cancer One Book at a Time

Short story that needs a novel

Hush by Mary Anne Mohanraj

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Dear Mary Anne Mohanraj, your story Hush just blew me away! I have probably never read anything so short that threw me for such a loop. This story about a middle-aged mom coming home from a long trip as a flight attendant. She is “human” but not of a new world, not like her ancestors of Old Earth. But is she humane? This is tested the day she comes home to find her (alien) neighbors’ daughter (approximately 14-years-old) being harassed by the local authorities. Of course, you […]

Up Up and Crash… after saving the day

Sort of Super by Eric Gapstu

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At first, I almost did not finish this book due in March 2022.  I was thinking that Sort of Super was just another kid superhero who has the brain of a grape. One should not be thinking “Dumba$$” about an eleven-year-old/middle school kid. But Wyatt is a dumb dumba$$. I understand not being able to handle his powers or having misunderstandings (we all have had to calibrate to our “other left”), but even a kid should know what a “Muggle Dumbledore” means (not that he […]

Not just the middle school blues

Other Boys by Damian Alexander

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We know this story: Boy learning who he is. And we know the story of Boy learning that he is Gay and that’s okay. However, Damian Alexander’s approach makes Other Boys a fresh take on that story. The use of the wording/phrase “other boy(s)” is used throughout the book. Sometimes it is, “You are not like the other boys” and sometimes a bit more subtle, but it is there. Sometimes it is a half-compliment and others times and out and out insult. Both will make […]

Two Touching Stories

Typewriter by Yevgenia Nayberg

No Ordinary Jacket by Sue-Ellen Pashley

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Once upon a time a typewriter proudly typed for its Russian author. It had the Cyrillic keyboard, that tapped out story after story. But when the author comes to America, the typewriter is used less. That is, until a new owner finds it and has it ring out again. Typewriter by Yevgenia Nayberg, is a different story. Typewriter is, as advertised, about a typewriter. While we tend not to see something like this today, the book is set in a contemporary setting. There is some […]

Kip is a quiet girl in a loud city and now now her fun pencil eraser is talking to her.

The Odds by Matt Stanton

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When the imagination goes wild, it goes really wild for Kip in this 8- to 10-year-old reader graphic novel called The Odds. In this first volume of a new series by Matt Stanton, lives up to its name, The Odds. Kip, our main character, wakes up one morning to see several characters from her dad’s game from his phone, from the television, from her books, a dinosaur her dreams/nightmares, her dad’s comic character, the alien eraser from her pencil, plus a pink elephant that really […]

Poetry and dogs and cats and wheelbarrows oh my

Love That Dog by Sharon Creech

Hate That Cat by Sharon Creech

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When I first came to work at the bookstore one of my coworkers had been in the business for several years (but not at “our” store) and one author he liked was Sharon Creech. I would read a few of her books because of his recommendation and the new one that had just come out. But I realized she was an author that wrote books you “liked or not” that book but not necessarily a “like or not” the actual author kind of author. I […]



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