Cannonball Read 17

Sticking It to Cancer One Book at a Time

“Play play play! Now now now!” say all babies!

Play in the Wild: How Baby Animals Like to Have Fun (In the Wild). by Lita Judge

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Lita Judge is at it again with Play in the Wild: How Baby Animals Like to Have Fun (In the Wild). They show us how adorable baby animals do adorable things in the wild. Each animal is given a small paragraph or two showing how play helps them grow. And how play will help them survive when they are older. Sweet illustrations that are not overly bold, but not muted either, run about the page letting us know how each critter jumps and plays and […]

For zoology and art geeks! The original Pantone collection, as used by Darwin.

Werner's Nomenclature of Colours Adapted to Zoology, Botany, Chemistry, Mineralogy, Anatomy, and the Arts by Patrick Syme

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Shout out to Ms. Was for suggesting this book to me last March! I put it on my Christmas list and Santa delivered. The full title of this petite tome is almost as long as the book itself: Werner’s Nomenclature of Colours, with Additions, Arranged So As to Render It Highly Useful to the Arts and Sciences, Particularly Zoology, Botany, Chemistry, Mineralology, and Morbid Anatomy, Annexed to Which Are Examples Selected from Well-Known Objects in the Animal, Vegetable, and Mineral Kingdoms. This delightful little book […]

In which I recommend an exceptionally good movie in place of this book

The Soul of an Octopus: A Surprising Exploration into the Wonder of Consciousness by Sy Montgomery

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Scroll all the way to the bottom for movie recommendation! Is anything quite so disappointing as picking up a book that you fully expect to be a five-star read and being met with something you can only generously call mediocre? I was so excited at the prospect of learning about octopuses, those wonderful invertebrates, that I sat down with my beloved book darts, certain that I’d want to permanently tag many interesting passages. Now a few golden embellishments stare up at me from the pages, […]

Advanced Bird Nerdery

The Most Perfect Thing: Inside (and Outside) a Bird's Egg by Tim Birkhead

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With the exception, perhaps, of the most dedicated vegan, all of us have cracked open an egg at some point in our lives: to scramble for breakfast, to make an egg drop soup, or, for those more reckless in our diet, to whip up a rich creme brûlée. Yet how many of us have ever paused to wonder about the complex mechanisms that go into the creation of the egg itself? A 19th-century abolitionist named Thomas Wentworth Higginson once said, “If required on pain of death […]

Even slime molds find their way better than I do

Supernavigators: Exploring the Wonders of How Animals Find Their Way by David Barrie

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My friends, I have a condition. I suppose the commonly used term for it is “directionally challenged.” When I go back east to visit my family, my husband has to navigate even if we are driving in an area where I grew up, because his ability to remember where we are is so far superior to mine, even though he’d never been to the area before we met. When I go to a shopping mall or a medical complex, the only way I can find […]

Save the Flower Vampires

Tiny Bird:  Hummingbirds’ Amazing Journey by Robert Burleigh

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I think I was in love with Tiny Bird:  Hummingbirds’ Amazing Journey before I even opened this picture book. The illustration that was the cover was as eye catching as the hummingbird itself. I knew that Wendell Minor would not disappoint with the art (or so I was hoping) but could Robert Burleigh create text that would be interesting and as bold as the illustrations? And they did. The result of these two artists was an accessible for multiple ages and levels picture book that […]



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