Kamala Khan is a pretty ordinary geeky teenager from Jersey City, until she’s suddenly given the extraordinary powers of the superhero Ms. Marvel. She’s both excited and confused. Can a Muslim girl even be a superhero? She certainly feels that the outfit could be a bit less revealing. How is she going to combine the responsibilities of fighting crime, rescuing people and righting wrongs if she also has to worry about obeying her parents and keeping cerfew? Before she’s even entirely aware what she’s doing, […]
YA readers should definitely check this out–you might like it better than I did.
I had medium expectations for this book, despite the almost overwhelmingly positive reviews from everyone I know who’s read it. Jay Kristoff’s writing never completely gels for me, but he’s always an interesting author, and the small writing issues I usually have with him don’t matter in the grand scheme, so I keep reading his stuff. The two books I’ve read by his co-author, Amie Kaufman, I haven’t been very impressed with. So I kept my expectations low on purpose. This turned out to be […]
A Memoir constructed from poetry
I’m a sucker for award-winning, young-adult novels. So, I can’t remember how it came to be there now, but it’s not too surprising that I had Brown Girl Dreaming (2014) by Jacqueline Woodson on my wait list at the library. From my diligent research before borrowing this book [reading the title], I assumed that it was the coming-of-age story of a young, black girl. On the one hand, I was right,Brown Girl Dreaming is a coming-of-age story. However, where I was expecting a fictional novel; this turned out […]
A Different YA Novel
I guess it is only fitting that I complete my Cannonball on a book that I first learned of from a Cannonball review. Yea! I can’t remember who now, but someone’s review convinced me that I should add The Disreputable History of Frankie Landau-Banks (2008) by E. Lockhart to my queue. Frankie is starting her Sophomore year at Alabaster Preparatory Academy, an elite boarding school. The summer has changed her from a scrawny girl with frizzy hair to someone the boys are suddenly noticing. It doesn’t […]