Book Cover
http://www.amazon.com/Counting-7s-Holly-Goldberg-Sloan/dp/0803738552
Book Summary
A highly gifted, adopted 12-year-old girl, Willow Chance, lost both of her adopted parents in a car accident. She now stays with a Vietnamese family that she just recently got to know before a foster family is assign to her. Willows becomes the sister that Mai never had; a motivation for Mai's brother, Quang-ha who sees the same counselor as Willow (that's how Willow got to know the family), to do better in school; an assistance to Pattie (Mai and Quang-ha's mother) for expanding her nail salon business; an inspiration to Jairo Hernandez, a taxi driver, to go back to school for a career in the medical field; and helps Dell Duke, her counselor, to want to become better at anything. At the end, these new strangers in Willow's life also teach her the meaning of love and having a family.
Reference
Sloan, Holly Goldberg. (2013). Counting by 7s, Penguin Group.
Librarian's Corner
I am very glad to have read this book. This realistic fiction, Counting by 7s, is a book that I will recommend to all boys and girls although I think it attracts more girl readers than boys. I've read more books than usual ever since I started my LIS program and I have to say that Counting by 7s impressed me the most. The story is beautifully composed and I can see shadows of different characters in my personal life. Having read this book also makes me think more about the people around me and I'm more appreciative toward them. This is the only book so far that I want to read again. This book is great to use to teach writing, character traits, and also can be used for the social aspect. I recommend for 5th grade and up.
Reviews
From Kirkus
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)
Reference
Sloan, Holly Goldberg. (2013). Counting by 7s, Penguin Group.
Librarian's Corner
I am very glad to have read this book. This realistic fiction, Counting by 7s, is a book that I will recommend to all boys and girls although I think it attracts more girl readers than boys. I've read more books than usual ever since I started my LIS program and I have to say that Counting by 7s impressed me the most. The story is beautifully composed and I can see shadows of different characters in my personal life. Having read this book also makes me think more about the people around me and I'm more appreciative toward them. This is the only book so far that I want to read again. This book is great to use to teach writing, character traits, and also can be used for the social aspect. I recommend for 5th grade and up.
Reviews
From Kirkus
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)
Kirkus Review. (June 2013). [Review for the book Counting by 7s by Holly Goldberg Sloan.] Kirkus Review.
From School Library Journal
$16.99. ISBN 978-0-8037-3855-3. LC 2012004994.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.
School Library Journal. (September 2013). [Review for the book Counting by 7s by Holly Goldberg Sloan.] School Library Journal, retrieved from http://www.slj.com/2013/09/reviews/fiction-reviews/pick-of-the-day-counting-by-7s/#_.
Value to the Library
Elementary School Library
The school librarian needs to do a book talk on this book to the 3rd, 4th, and 5th graders since it is a Bluebonnet nominee. The book cover of this book can be used to for the realistic fiction display in the library. This book can also be used by the school counselor with gifted students, or students who are in similar situations as the main character of the story.
The school librarian needs to do a book talk on this book to the 3rd, 4th, and 5th graders since it is a Bluebonnet nominee. The book cover of this book can be used to for the realistic fiction display in the library. This book can also be used by the school counselor with gifted students, or students who are in similar situations as the main character of the story.
