Book Review: Counting by 7s by Holly Goldberg Sloan

Counting by 7s by Holly Goldberg Sloan
Publisher: Dial Books
Release Date: August 29, 2013
My rating: 5 of 5 stars

Publisher’s Description:

Willow Chance is a twelve-year-old genius, obsessed with nature and diagnosing medical conditions, who finds it comforting to count by 7s. It has never been easy for her to connect with anyone other than her adoptive parents, but that hasn’t kept her from leading a quietly happy life . . . until now.

Suddenly Willow’s world is tragically changed when her parents both die in a car crash, leaving her alone in a baffling world. The triumph of this book is that it is not a tragedy. This extraordinarily odd, but extraordinarily endearing, girl manages to push through her grief. Her journey to find a fascinatingly diverse and fully believable surrogate family is a joy and a revelation to read.

This is the first middle-grade book I’ve read that was so compelling I couldn’t put it down. My boys were also enthralled with it and they both gave it an enthusiastic thumbs up. My eight-year old is highly sensitive about death and tragedy so the fact that he liked it even though Willow’s parents die is pretty amazing. He said he liked it because he could relate to Willow. I think most kids will find something about Willow to relate to even if they aren’t a super genius like she is.

I loved Willow. I liked her observations about life and people. I thought all of the characters were wonderful even though they all had their flaws. Dell, the school counselor is horribly inept which I found to be a unique twist on this type of story. Normally, I would expect that the school counselor would be the hero, helping Willow cope with the loss of her parents. Instead, Willow is the one helping him. That’s a running theme in this story – Willow gets support from a variety of people but she teaches them all things too. It’s a two-way street.

I really appreciated the fact that there were several characters of color in this book, including Willow herself. It’s nice to see diversity in any book but especially in one for children.

This book was a selection for the Intergenerational Book Club my sons and I belong too. Ideas for theme related snacks included seven-layer dip and seven-layer cake. The book club is through the Unitarian Universalist church that my family attends. UUs have seven principles that we strive to live by so part of our discussion included which of the seven principles are represented in the book. (If you look at the principles on the UUA’s website you’ll probably notice that they seem pretty wordy for middle-grade kids to understand. We have more simplified versions of the them that the kids learn in Sunday school.) Anyway, I’m not trying to proselytize – I just thought it was neat that they tied into our discussion so well because there are seven of them.

Counting by 7s is a powerful story about family, community and the power of love. Highly recommended for kids of all ages.

For more reviews of books for children and teens, check out Booking Mama’s feature, Kid Konnection, posted on Saturdays. If you’d like to participate in Kid Konnection and share a post about anything related to children’s books (picture, middle grade, or young adult) from the past week, you can go to her site to leave a comment and your link .