For the past four years, I’ve been teaching poetry as part of my social justice as creativity unit in Composition II. I’ve taught several different poets–including favorites Katie Ford, Marvin Bell, and Yusef Komunyakaa–but have also been turning to novels in verse as a means of making the poetry more approachable to young adult students. I taught an excerpt from Jacqueline Woodson’s Brown Girl Dreaming (and I will read the whole thing this CBR, for sure), Kwame Alexander’s The Crossover, and Thanhha Lai’s Inside Out […]
Darcy & Lizzie – Not a Pride & Prejudice Fanfic
I wasn’t expecting such a clever, enjoyable read. Westerfeld has his cake and eats it with two stories happening simultaneously in alternating chapters. Darcy Patel is a very young (just out of high school) writer who puts off going to college and moves to New York City after she lands a major book deal. Her début novel is about a girl named Lizzie who survives a terrorist attack by pretending to be dead and slipping into the afterworld. In the afterworld, Lizzie meets a mysterious […]
The Definition of Comfort Reading
This book is the literary equivalent of fuzzy slippers, a soft sweater, and the best cup of hot chocolate. It is pure comfort and takes me to a happy place every time I reread it. Actually, I feel that way about most of the Harry Potter books (not you Chamber of Secrets, not you), but Half-Blood Prince is my favorite of the series. I’m not going to bother giving a synopsis and there will be spoilers ahoy, just warning you. I’ll assume most cannonballers have […]
So Disappointing
I had such high hopes for this sequel after having so much fun reading the first book in the Shades of London series, but I can’t pretend this was anything other than a massive disappointment. Everything I loved about the first book (the coherent plot, fun cast of characters, Rory’s personality, great setting) was absent from The Madness Underneath. I wish I had stopped reading after the first book. In The Madness Underneath, Rory is recovering from the events of the first book under her […]
Yet another YA endeavor…
If you’re in the mood for another YA dystopian novel, this might quench your thirst. With so many to choose from, what Reboot offers is a quick, easy read with a twist on the zombie genre…but zombie novel it is not. Wren one-seventy-eight died five years ago. But, as is common with children who contract the mysterious KDH virus, she revived, or rebooted. As her name suggests, she didn’t reboot until 178 minutes after her death, a long time compared with other reboots. As a […]
A Beautiful Coming of Age Story
So this is the week I thank all of you, my fellow Cannonballers, for having such fabulous taste in books. Without all of you, I definitely would not have found some of my favorite books of the year so far! This review requires thanking yesknopemaybe for reviewing the incredible Brown Girl Dreaming by Jacqueline Woodson. Gracias. So this is the mostly autobiographical story of Ms. Woodson told from birth till probably ten to eleven. What makes it so special is that it’s told in free […]
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