Cannonball Read 17

Sticking It to Cancer One Book at a Time

Bad-a$$ gals

The Girl Who Changed Little League: The True Story of Maria Pepe and Her Battle to Play Ball. by Maria Pepe with Jean L. S. Patrick

Sparrow Loves Reptiles by Murry Burgess and Tamisha Anthony

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Girls are bad-a$$ in ways they might not know. And Maria Pepe did not really know it, she just knew she wanted to play Little League. But the powers that be said girls can’t play. Yet, Maria was not going to let herself be stopped. And Pepe with Jean L. S. Patrick showed how this could be done in The Girl Who Changed Little League: The True Story of Maria Pepe and Her Battle to Play Ball. The story is simple: Girl loves baseball. Girl […]

Sixty-six million years ago or Ya know the other day

One Cosmic Rock: The Story of the Asteroid that Changed Our World by Julia Vasileva

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Sixty-six million years ago, an asteroid hurtled through space toward an ancient Earth that looked very different from the one we know today. And in One Cosmic Rock: The Story of the Asteroid that Changed Our World by Karen Krossing we see how that came to be in poetic language for the picture book crowd.   Good for ages five and up, this book is a simple, but involved, non-fiction story that has interesting illustrations by Julia Vasileva. They are neither realistic or abstract, but a […]

Jolene, Jolene, Jolene, Jolene don’t stop helping the bees, hunny!

Green Jolene and the Backyard Bees by Wendy Mass

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Green Jolene and the Backyard Bees is written by an author I have enjoyed reading over the years. This author is Wendy Mass. And while they have had a few different ages and have written a few different genres, their more realistic stories are fun. And when Mass collaborates with illustrator Billy Yong you get an interesting combination of realistic story, art and modern feelings. Yet, there is also a classical, family friendly feeling as well. This mixture works for today’s readers aged at least […]

The woman and the slave girl

Raging Clouds by Yudori

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Books sometimes find me. I was going to the library to pick up some I had ordered and Raging Clouds by Yudori was sitting off to the side of the entrance. I almost didn’t go that way to the checkout desk (I usually go left, not right) but something made me go right. And there it was. Fat, shiny and new. It was shyly facing away from me. And that’s the last time this book was shy. Even the librarian when I checked it out wasn’t […]

What stars are made of

The Curious Life of Cecilia Payne: Discovering the Stuff of Stars by Laura Alary

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TITLE: The Curious Life of Cecilia Payne: Discovering the Stuff of Stars AUTHOR:  Laura Alary ILLUSTRATOR:  Yas Imamura  PUB DATE: Late January 2026 READ AS: Online reader copy RESULT:  Dang this is good! NEED MORE?: YES OKAY MORE: This is a picture book about Cecila Payne, who was a young girl who did not fit in. She stood out in many ways not just because she was taller than other girls/women, not just because she was a female, but because she really loved nature and […]

Winter, spring, summer and fall, all ya gotta do is read the poems

Poems for Every Season by Bette Westera and David Colmer

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A while back I requested several picture books from an online reader site. One of them was Poems for Every Season by Bette Westera and David Colmer (translator). I was not sure what I would get. I mean I figured poems and seasons (and of course most likely poems about seasons), but I did not have super high expectations. I figured things would be good, but not great. Plus, I just did not want to be disappointed as I had been a lot before (and since) reading […]



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