Cannonball Read 17

Sticking It to Cancer One Book at a Time

How Mama Tree and the Forest woke Little Pin

Wake Up, Little Pin!: The Story of a Sleepy Sapling by Loretta Garbutt

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Wake Up, Little Pin!: The Story of a Sleepy Sapling by Loretta Garbutt and illustrated by  Marianne Ferrer came out in mid-March of 2024. However, I did not learn about it until August of that year. I found an online reader copy and it sounded interesting, but I was not sure at first if I wanted to read it. After a bit I said, why not read a book about a tree? I like trees. I like nature (as long as I’m not in it […]

Free Spirit Publishing has some neat books

Thank You, Night by Dan McCauley

Thank You, Rain by Dan McCauley

B Is for Belonging by Shannon Anderson

Hello, Beech Tree! by Rasha Hamid

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A while back I saw two online reader copies that had intriguing covers (or thumbnails of the cover as it was only a small image). I liked them, but figured I knew what they were about by judging the cover. Thank You, Night and Thank You, Rain looked like they would be nice father and child stories. One set at night and one set in/around a rainy day. And I was not wrong. (Yes, I read them eventually.) They had more to them than those […]

One seed

Big Tree by Brian Selznick

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While I did not completely love the grainy illustrations of Big Tree by Brian Selznick, I understand the reason for them and appreciate them. And there were several that were more fleshed out, but they felt few and far between. The story is a mature environmental tale with spiritual elements that is told by two seeds from a seed pod from Mama Sycamore. It does not sound like it makes sense, but it does, even if sometimes the flow of the story felt to be not as […]

Mind? Blown.

The Tree by Colin Tudge

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Well, I started this book knowing very little in the way of botany, and I feel compelled to point out the process of placing plants into various families is Seriously Bonkers, to use the scientific term.  The two biggest families are, in layman’s terms, the roses and the daisies.  But the roses also include grape vines, cabbages, oak trees, and rubber trees, while the daisies have carrots, coffee, ash trees, and olive trees for relatives.  Apparently it all has to do with DNA, but wow.  […]

Trees move slowly. Sometimes books about trees do, also.

The Hidden Life of Trees: What They Feel, How They Communicate by Peter Wohlleben

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Peter Wohlleben is a man to be admired. Having graduated from a forestry school in Germany, he worked for the forestry commission for more than 20 years but eventually became disillusioned by the common use of what he considered to be damaging forestry practices. He began applying his own ideas as manager of an ecologically-friendly beech forest, and he shares his knowledge and passion in the multiple books he’s written about trees. The Hidden Life of Trees, a New York Times bestseller, aims to make trees […]

Heartwood

Greenwood by Michael Christie

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I have not been able to sit still and read for a long time. With the pandemic, my mind can rarely engage with a book for any sort of marathon session. Michael Christie has figured out the antidote, at least for me, with his tightly packed, well-plotted and bracing book about four generations of the Greenwood family. His narrative inspired me to reflect on my own long family history in this country, to consider the things I do and don’t know for certain about my […]



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