Cannonball Read 17

Sticking It to Cancer One Book at a Time

One For The Culture

The 2000s Made Me Gay: Essays on Pop Culture by Grace Perry

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Read as part of CBR17 Bingo: culture. This is a collection of essays about queerness and pop culture.  I’m a few years older than the author so I experienced some of her references differently but I loved this collection of essays form Grace Perry. She perfectly captures a late-generation millennial’s experience with sexuality at a time when things were slowly starting to change. And with the reflections about Gossip Girl and Katy Perry, her willingness to be vulnerable about her growth, how difficult it was, and […]

When your duet partner chirps

Beatrice and the Nightingale by Patricia Newman and Isabelle Follath

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You ever read a book that was not Best Book Ever, but there was something about it that really hit you, that really made you feel, you really enjoyed, you got into, that gave you something? Beatrice and the Nightingale by Patricia Newman and Isabelle Follath was that book for me. I read it via an online reader copy, it will come out in mid February 2026 and I might get a finished copy. The idea is simple: a young girl from a musical family […]

The grandfather, the boy, the guitar and the song

The One About the Blackbird by Melanie Florence

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Bring the tissues when you read The One About the Blackbird by Melanie Florence and illustrator Matt James (read via an online reader copy, due later October 2025). This is a bittersweet story of the love of a grandson and grandfather and how the tables turn as time goes by, but music always pulls them together. The story is about how a young boy is always surrounded by music. One night he tells his grandfather he, too, wants to make music like his favorite song […]

Two reviews for you

Mary Had a Little Jam by Tammi Sauer and Vanessa Brantley-Newton

Pencil  by Hye-Eun Kim

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My recent picture book reading day included a lot of books. So many in fact that I had to break them into two different reviews. Also read and now included in this review were Mary Had a Little Jam by Tammi Sauer and Vanessa Brantley-Newton and Pencil  by Hye-Eun Kim. Well, Hye-Eun Kim’s book was more looked at than read as it is a wordless picture book. And still Pencil is something that I can write several words about. The fun part of this book […]

The audiobook is a must.

The River Has Roots by Amal El-Mohtar

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Thanks to NetGalley and Macmillan Audio for the ARC. It hasn’t affected the contents of my review. Happy pub day to this lovely little book 🙂 Okay, I’m rounding this up to five stars because I can’t stop thinking about it. Setting aside re-reads, I think this might actually be the best book I read in February. This is a fairytale-esque novella about two sisters who sing to willow trees and have to deal with unwanted and wanted suitors, and it’s about the strength of […]

Children’s Music comes to life

A Life of Song: The Story of Ella Jenkins (The First Lady of Children's Music) by Ty-Juana Taylor

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I was  texting with a friend of mine the other day about how I like biographies of people who are not as well known. I had not yet found A Life of Song: The Story of Ella Jenkins (The First Lady of Children’s Music) by Ty-Juana Taylor and illustrated by Jade Johnson at that time,  but boy does it fit that category. If I had heard of Ella Jenkins, I have since forgotten it.  She is a woman who brought music to the people to […]



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