Counting by 7s

reagan113 - After reading Counting By 7’s by Holly Goldberg Sloan it is evident that this book truly deserved it’s spot on the 2015-2016 Rebecca Caudill Award book list. It's a definitely a five star book! This realistic fiction book will take you straight into the heart of the story of the first page, it's an attention grabber and is sure to keep you wonder what's going to happen next. The story follow a twelve year old girl named Willow Chance, she's a super genius who is obsessed with plants and medical conditions. When Willow takes a state standardized test and scores 100% on it the school suspects that she cheated and sets her up to meet with a school counselor. Dell Duke, the counselor, later finds out that that Willow really did not cheat but, instead she is incredibly smart. While with Dell Duke, Willow meets a friend, Mai, this is something she hasn't had since her old friend Margaret moved to Canada. When things couldn't seem to get any better tragedy strikes, Willows adoptive parents were killed in a car crash, she's put into to foster care center, but she has trouble connecting with anyone. Mai comes up with the idea of her family taking her into foster care. Mai’s mother agrees but it's only temporary, Willow will need to find a permanent home soon. This book is a real tragedy, Willow never met her biological parent and loses her adoptive parents at a very young age, this is something a child should never have to go through. But this book can also be very uplifting, Willow seems some hope in her future and you can't help but to be excited for her, when Mai mother decided to take her in for a while Willow finally gets the break she needs and the reader can connect to her easily. Counting By 7’s is an amazing book that could be compared to Out Of My Mind because of the strong young girl characters who deal with teasing and bullies but are both incredibly smart and have to show people what they can do. Willow, like Melody, the main character in Out Of My Mind, are both the smartest kids at their school. Willow and Melody preserve through what life gives them. Melody can't speak or move without someone else's help. For a while after Willows parents died she didn't talk much or do anything, she didn't go to school or bother to read and learn anything. These similarities are why they could be compared to each other. The type of reader who would like this book is someone who likes an underdog, tragedy, and a story about finding family. Holly Goldberg Sloan Has written various other types of books including mostly young children's books, one recently published this past year entitled Appleblossom the Possum. Overall the book Counting By 7’s is a five star book I would recommend to just about anyone who is over 5th grade.

July 8, 2013
Willow Chance is an extremely precocious and analytical 12-year-old “genius,” and she doesn’t fit in with other kids (though she’d doubtlessly find a kindred spirit in Lauren Tarshis’s Emma-Jean Lazarus). Despite Willow’s social difficulties, she makes an impression on everyone around her—whether it’s Dell Duke, a lonely and ineffectual school district counselor, or Jairo Hernandez, the taxi driver Willow hires to drive her to her meetings with Dell. After Willow’s parents die in a car crash, her new friend Mai Nguyen persuades her mother to take Willow in; despite the Nguyens’ poverty, their makeshift home and open arms help bring Willow back from the void. As in Sloan’s I’ll Be There, the narration shifts among multiple viewpoints, from Willow’s cerebral first-person perspective to third-person chapters that demonstrate how her presence is transformational to those around her, young and old. But while elements of Willow’s story are indeed extraordinary and even inspirational, Sloan’s somewhat portentous storytelling gets in the way of letting readers reach their own conclusions about the ways people save each other. Ages 10–up. Agent: Amy Berkower, Writers House.

July 15, 2013
A story of renewal and belonging that succeeds despite, not because of, its contrivances. Twelve-year-old genius Willow Chance was adopted as an infant by her "so white" parents (Willow is mixed race) and loses them both in one afternoon in a convenient (plotwise) car accident. Outside of her parents, she has a hard time making friends since her mishmash of (also convenient, plotwise) interests--disease, plants and the number seven--doesn't appeal to her fellow middle-grade students. Losing her parents propels her on her hero's-journey quest to find belonging. Along the way, her fate intertwines with those of a confident high school girl named Mai and her surly brother, Quang-ha; their energetic, manicure-salon-owning mother, Pattie (formerly Dung); Jairo Hernandez, a taxi driver with an existential crisis; and a failure of a school counselor named Dell Duke. With these characters' ages running the gamut from 12 to high school to mid-30s and their voices included in a concurrent third-person narration along with Willow's precise, unemotional first-person narration, readers may well have a hard time engaging. Relying heavily on serendipity--a technique that only adds, alas, to the "leave no stone unturned" feeling of the story--the plot resolves in a bright and heartfelt, if predictable conclusion. Despite its apparent desire to be all things to all people, this is, in the end, an uplifting story. (Fiction. 10-14)

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Starred review from September 1, 2013

Gr 5-8-Twelve-year-old Willow Chase lived with her adoptive parents in Bakersfield, California. There in the midst of the high desert, she grew a garden in her backyard, her sanctuary. She was excited about starting a new school, hoping this time she might fit in, might find a friend. Willow had been identified in preschool as highly gifted, most of the time causing confusion and feelings of ineptness in her teachers. Now at her new school she is accused of cheating because no one has ever finished the state proficiency test in just 17 minutes, let alone gotten a perfect score. Her reward is behavioral counseling with Dell Duke, an ineffectual counselor with organizational and social issues of his own. She does make a friend when Mai Nguyen brings her brother, Quang-ha, to his appointment, and their lives begin to intertwine when Willow's parents are killed in an auto accident. For the second time in her life she is an orphan, forced to find a "new normal." She is taken in temporarily by Mai's mother, who must stay ahead of Social Services. While Willow sees herself as just an observer, trying to figure out the social norms of regular family life, she is actually a catalyst for change, bringing together unsuspecting people and changing their lives forever. The narration cleverly shifts among characters as the story evolves. Willow's philosophical and intellectual observations contrast with Quang-ha's typical teenage boy obsessions and the struggles of a Vietnamese family fighting to live above the poverty level. Willow's story is one of renewal, and her journey of rebuilding the ties that unite people as a family will stay in readers' hearts long after the last page.-Cheryl Ashton, Amherst Public Library, OH

Copyright 2013 School Library Journal, LLC Used with permission.

Starred review from August 1, 2013
Grades 7-10 *Starred Review* In a voice that is frank, charming, and delightfully odd, Willow Chance narrates the strange and heartbreaking circumstances that lead her to find an offbeat, patchwork quilt of a family. As an adopted, self-identified person of color, precocious genius Willow unabashedly knows that she is different, but her parents love and support her idiosyncrasies, such as wearing her gardening outfit to school, her preoccupation with disease, her anthropological curiosity about her peers, and her obsession with the number seven. That self-assuredness shines through Willow's narrative and becomes crucial to her survival after the unexpected death of her parents, which makes Willow a prime candidate for life in a group homean environment that could be disastrous for an unusual child like her. Luckily, she finds new friends who are compelled to protect her: Mai and her family, who live in the garage behind the nail salon they own, and Willow's slouch of a guidance counselor, Dell. Sloan (I'll Be There, 2011) has masterfully created a graceful, meaningful tale featuring a cast of charming, well-rounded characters who learn sweetbut never cloyinglessons about resourcefulness, community, and true resilience in the face of loss.(Reprinted with permission of Booklist, copyright 2013, American Library Association.)