Cannonball Read 17

Sticking It to Cancer One Book at a Time

Purple thumbs and stabby plants

Prunella by Beth Ferry

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Along with Millie Fleur’s Poison Garden by Christy Mandin, the picture book Prunella by Beth Ferry and illustrated by Claire Keane, has given me a new category for books I like: Plants that are Not Your Cute Fluffy Pretty Garden Variety. The surface story is the same with both books: girls who love the spookier, odd, weird, dangers, spiky, thorny plants. They like them so much that they are isolated from their communities and peers. In both cases, the parent(s) encourage this individuality, even if […]

No bird brain here

Clever Crow by Chris Butterworth

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I had this online reader link in my keep files for ages. I looked at the title (Clever Crow) and thought, so I want to read it? It seems like it might be a bit slow. And then I clicked on it, saw a few illustrations by Olivia Lomenech Gill and figured I would give it a shot. This artwork was giving off darker vibes that I didn’t think a traditional picture book crowd would be the audience for.  The picture book Clever Crow has […]

By the author who has a ginger girlfriend, an even more ginger dog and an undisclosed number of cats and a lot to say in this delightful book

The Lonely Book by Meg Grehan

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I know it is odd to start a review with a negative, but I want to get it out of the way. I did not like The Lonely Book as much as Meg Grehan’s other titles. This one felt younger than the ones I have read and I was expecting something more mature. With that said, I still enjoyed this addition to their collection of prose poetry novels. Most of Grehan’s books deal with LGBTQ+ issues as well as mental health. This time we are […]

“I feel like this isn’t about me”

Yellowface (2023) by R. F. Kuang

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I don’t really know what I can say about this book, which I think means it’s worked? I can say that it’s blistering, and brilliant; I can say that it fits the ‘Fiasco‘ square because it’s about someone who “reached for the stars and utterly failed…a disaster created by human actions” and in this case the disaster is a person who finds herself in a nightmare of her own making, but the disaster is also the publishing industry and the surrounding discourse, and also the […]

Girl is not truly one but truly two…. unless she has the magical antidote

Jaclyn Hyde by Annabeth Bondor-Stone and Connor White

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I am not sure I liked the book Jaclyn Hyde by Annabeth Bondor-Stone and Connor White. I know I enjoyed it, but liked it? I am still on the fence about it. There is a lot of good, but I am assuming that I am not really the audience for it, and therefore, not picking up what Bondor-Stone and White were putting down.  And this story is obvious: Jaclyn Hyde is perfect. Perfect grades, organizes her school books alphabetically by authors’ hometowns, never really gotten […]

Jack and the Beanstalk…. but different

A Home in the Sky (Twicetold Tales) by Olivia Snowe

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Few story spoilers below: While the retelling of Jack and the Beanstalk has been done before, A Home in the Sky (Twicetold Tales) is a slightly older version and has a few modern touches.  Olivia Snowe has a series of different fairy tales/legends and made them for a today’s audience, but also kept the original feeling (or at least with this one, which I believe is Snowe’s first).  I have read reviews that said Jack was 11-years-old. I either missed that or people are assuming […]



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