Cannonball Read 17

Sticking It to Cancer One Book at a Time

She wanted to be a Doctor but became a Lawyer and changed a few things along the way.

Fall Down Seven Times, Stand Up Eight: Patsy Takemoto Mink and the Fight for Title IX by Jen Bryant

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Did you know that Title IX was not just for athletes? It started out as not forty words that said that women had to be treated equally in all matters: education, and sports alike. Of course, that was only one thing Patsy Takemoto (later Patsy Mink) would do in her life. A young Patsy lived in Maui. She knew her family had come to this country for a better life and that meant (though she was not sure at the time) an education. At four-years-old […]

Crime on a Plane

Unsolved Case Files: Escape at 10,000 Feet: D.B. Cooper and the Missing Money by Tom Sullivan

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I think that Unsolved Case Files: Escape at 10,000 Feet: D.B. Cooper and the Missing Money by Tom Sullivan will be on the top ten best list of 2021 Reads for me. There is a lot about this book that people do not know and yet, it fascinated a nation for years. This book will grab readers who like nonfiction, mystery, and true crime. In “my day” it would be a “boy book” but currently anyone can find something about it. I will point out […]

Love, Hound Dogs and Country Music

Dear Hank Williams by Kimberly Willis Holt

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I like Kimberly Willis Holt as an author. I think most things she has written, even if I am not a huge fan, I will enjoy. Yet, I really went at Dear Hank Williams with no expectations. Granted, my first thought was “How many kids are going to know who Hank Williams is?” But soon realized that is not the important part. This book might be set in the late 1940’s but in many ways, it could be set almost anytime. There is some history […]

Nothing more than a conjuror of cheap tricks

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How would you live your life if you knew when you were going to die? That’s the high-concept idea behind Chloe Benjamin’s The Immortalists, which opens in 1969 Brooklyn with the four Gold children, aged 7 to 13, visiting a fortune teller who gives each the exact date of his or her death. Three of the four are upset by their predictions, and each reacts differently in the following years.  Simon leaves home at 16 and follows his sister to San Francisco where he can […]

Ghost Boys through history

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First, Ghost Boys does seem like a fairly balanced look how the shooting of Jerome, a 12-year-old boy, by a white police officer effects not only Jerome’s family, but the officer and his family as well. Perhaps, it is tilted a little more in Jerome’s favor, but that is to be expected. Second, this will bring up the feelings and thoughts we have on the subjects presented: Someone at the hearing yells, “Black Lives Matters.” And the father of Jerome is going to sue the […]



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