Cannonball Read 17

Sticking It to Cancer One Book at a Time

“A barbarian who cannot write a sentence of grammar and can hardly spell his own name.” (John Quincy Adams)

Andrew Jackson: The Making of America by Teri Kanefield

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This book took a while to get through, not because it is bad, but I was reading other books at the time and the subject was not 100% grabbing me. This book (as the title says) shows us Andrew Jackson and his part in Making America. And this is not an easy subject.  Andrew Jackson: The Making of America is the second book in this series). Alexander Hamilton was the first and Lincoln will be the third and Susan B. Anthony: the fourth. So far, […]

What would you do if you were arrested for wearing pants?

Mary Wears What She Wants by Keith Negley

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Mary Wears What She Wants and there is nothing you can do about it! Well, there is something you could do: You can make fun of her, tell her she is not “lady like” by wearing pants, protest, yell and make her feel bad about herself. Or you could support her. Keith Negley has taken the real-life story of Mary Edwards Walker of Oswego, New York and made a fiction story about the day Mary decided she did not like wearing dresses (with all their […]

America is our gal!

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Douglas Wood has created a very idealistic look at America and Americans. What is presented is what we were told this country is about: freedom, differences, agreeing to disagree. There is not even “oh sometimes we disagree so much we decide to kill each other like in the news shows us.” It does mention that we are human and sometimes we make mistakes.  It speaks of the Fourth of July, the Bill of Rights and other things that does make America unique. It does show […]

3 swift sleighs, 4 lobster rolls, 8 skaters carving, and a blue jay in a spruce tree!

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The Twelve Days of Christmas in New England (also in a hardcover version) is just the Twelve Days of Christmas song with New England features. Fun, but a limited audience. I read the board book size. This is not a bad way to present the song. However, the extras at the end (Vermont you ski and Maine you eat lobsters. Yes, a simplistic explanation, but that is the idea: the highlights are hit) might be a bit too much for the younger audience. In the […]

YAY TO MY FRIEND BETH KANELL! (Yes, little name dropping there!)

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First: YAY TO MY FRIEND BETH KANELL! She has created another novel for history and Vermont buffs. Long story how I meet her, but she and I have talked books, poetry and life in general and I cannot wait to talk The Long Shadow with her as well. Second: The Long Shadow is set in North Upton, Vermont in 1850. She deals with abolition, bounty hunters and hiding fugitives of the escaped slave kind. Her narrator, Alice, is a young teen girl, growing up in […]

Journalist, born in Egypt, grew up in Qatar, moved to Canada, now lives in Oregon, writes book about the Second US Civil War. Is Awesome.

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Those who cannot remember the past are condemned to repeat it.   — George Santayana If you were to guess what might cause a second US civil war, what would it be? Given the current political debate over the Trump administration, one might think it wouldn’t be so much a physical divide as an ideological one. Yet, in American War, by Omar El Akkad, the second civil war is imagined as erupting in 2074 over fossil fuels, because some southern states refuse to give them up, for […]



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