Cannonball Read 17

Sticking It to Cancer One Book at a Time

Play ball, swim, tennis, hockey and more safely and comfortably

This Skirt Won't Work!: How Women Athletes Changed Their Clothes and Changed the Game by Jennifer Cooper

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History has many layers. Dresses can have many layers.  But whereas history plays out, it is hard to play most sports or ride a bicycle in dresses. Especially the outfits that many women athletes would wear before some enterprising women decided to change things up. This Skirt Won’t Work!: How Women Athletes Changed Their Clothes and Changed the Game by Jennifer Cooper and illustrator Eva Byrne follows how tennis went from a long skirt to a 1920s fashion statement. How women hockey players would change […]

“I can be brave. I can be anything for noodles.”

Deep End by Ali Hazelwood

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4.5 stars Buzzword Title Challenge 25: Water words Scarlett Vandermeer is struggling, both with her academic subjects at Stanford and her diving. While physically fully recovered from a bad accident a year ago, Scarlett has a block that prevents her from even attempting the type of dive that had her hospitalised and having to go through several surgeries to fix her broken body. She needs to get her grades up if she wants to get into med school, and she has reluctantly agreed to go […]

She showed her knees and swam away a winner

Annette Feels Free: The True Story of Annette Kellerman, World-Class Swimmer, Fashion Pioneer, and Real-Life Mermaid by Katie Mazeika

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When looking through the old online reader copy links I found some surprises but others, like Annette Feels Free: The True Story of Annette Kellerman, World-Class Swimmer, Fashion Pioneer, and Real-Life Mermaid was only a small surprise as I like biographies of unknown (or at least mostly unknown) people. And Kellerman is a fairly unknown name today. But that was not the case when she was a swimmer. Taking Australia by storm, a young teen took to swimming like fish takes to swimming. It did […]

The non-swimmer in his crocodile family

Swim, Jim by Kaz Windness

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One day in the swamp, three crocodile siblings are born. Kim, Sim and Jim. Kim and Sim both jump right into the water to swim, but Jim? Well, he just puts his toe in. And like typical siblings, the others tease Jim. But though his parents reassure him he will swim when ready, he feels the swamp is too big and he must find a smaller swamp, and then everyone will realize that Jim can swim in, Swim, Jim by Kaz Windness. Okay, so the […]

Down in the (city) in a little bitty pool Swam several little fishies (or kids in this case)

Swim Team by Johnnie Christmas

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This adorable face looked up at me when I was looking at books in a catalog (okay, I know I’m old, but it was an online catalog, so no gruff okay?). It was of middle-schooler Bree. She was staring up and out with these sweet brown eyes, an impish smile, and a confidence I wanted to meet. So, meet her I did in Swim Team by Johnnie Christmas. What on the surface is a cute story of middle school woes with a little history included […]

Who Else Would Be Canny Enough to Try and Do Their World-Building Backwards?

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  Once again, I am going to try (perhaps unwisely) to review a book without reviewing its predecessors in the series! So be warned, I haven’t been able to do this without touching on some spoilers for earlier books. I guess this is what you get by making ´This Is The End’ a bingo square.   As far as authors go, Yoon Ha Lee can be a bit of a cruel master. The way he treats his readers throughout the earlier books in his Machineries […]



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