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  1 Counting by 7s
Author: Sloan, Holly Goldberg
 
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Class: Fiction
Age: 10-14
Language: English
Demand: Moderate
LC: PZ7.S633
Grade: 5-9

Print Run: 35000
ISBN-13: 9780803738553
LCCN: 2012004994
Imprint: Dial Books for Young Readers
Pub Date: 08/29/2013
Availability: Available
List: $18.99
  Hardcover
Physical Description: 380 p. ; 22 cm. H 8.56", W 5.75", D 1.17", 1.075 lbs.
LC Series:
Brodart Sources: Brodart's For Youth Interest Titles
Brodart's For Youth Interest: Popular
Brodart's Insight Catalog: Teen
Brodart's TOP Young Adult Titles
Bibliographies: Children's Core Collection, 22nd ed.
Children's Core Collection, 23rd ed.
Children's Core Collection, 24th ed.
Florida Sunshine State Young Readers Award, Gr. 6-8, Book lists
Middle and Junior High Core Collection, 12th ed.
Middle and Junior High Core Collection, 13th ed.
Middle and Junior High Core Collection, 14th ed.
Middle and Junior High Core Collection, 15th ed.
Nevada Young Readers' Award Nominees
New York Times Bestsellers List
New York Times Bestsellers: Children's Middle Grade and Young Adult Books
Texas Bluebonnet Award Master Lists
Awards: BCCB Blue Ribbons
BCCB Starred Reviews
Best Fiction for Young Adults
Booklist Starred Reviews
Horn Book Fanfare
Horn Book Guide Titles, Rated 1 - 4
Horn Book Starred Reviews
Indies Choice/E.B. White Read-Aloud Book Award Winners and Honors
Notable Children's Books in the English Language Arts
Notable Children's Books, ALA
Notable Social Studies Trade Books for Young People
School Library Journal Best Books
School Library Journal Starred Reviews
Teachers' Choices Reading List
Starred Reviews: Booklist
Bulletin of the Center for Children's Books
Horn Book
School Library Journal
TIPS Subjects: School Stories
Family Life
BISAC Subjects: JUVENILE FICTION / Family / Orphans & Foster Homes
JUVENILE FICTION / Girls & Women
JUVENILE FICTION / School & Education
LC Subjects: Eccentrics and eccentricities, Fiction
Eccentrics and eccentricities, Juvenile fiction
Gardening, Fiction
Gardening, Juvenile fiction
Genius, Fiction
Genius, Juvenile fiction
High schools, Fiction
High schools, Juvenile fiction
Orphans, Fiction
Orphans, Juvenile fiction
Schools, Fiction
SEARS Subjects: Eccentrics and eccentricities, Fiction
Gardening, Fiction
Genius, Fiction
High schools, Fiction
Orphans, Fiction
School stories
Reading Programs: Accelerated Reader Level: 5.6 , Points: 10.0
Lexile Level: 770
Reading Counts Level: 4.7 , Points: 16.0
 
Annotations
Brodart's TOP Young Adult Titles | 09/01/2013
When the only people she can connect with are killed in a car crash, Willow Chance, a 12-year-old genius, wonders how counting by 7s will make things better now that the only people who mattered are gone. Counting by 7s has always calmed Willow down. An obsession with nature and a passion for identifying medical conditions make it hard for Willow to fit in, but in this time of sorrow, she will find the strength to forge ahead and find a family. 384pp.
Starred Reviews:
Booklist | 08/01/2013
Grades 7-10. 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 home--an 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 sweet--but never cloying--lessons about resourcefulness, community, and true resilience in the face of loss. Hunter, Sarah. 384p. AMERICAN LIBRARY ASSOCIATION, c2013.
Bulletin of the Center for Children's Books | 09/01/2013
R. Gr. 5-8. Losing your parents once is bad enough, but Willow Chance is unlucky enough to experience such a bereavement twice, losing her birth parents when she was adopted in her infancy and her beloved adoptive parents when they're killed in a car crash shortly after Willow starts at her new middle school. The gifted, eccentric, and somewhat obsessive Willow has no obvious place to stay until a foster home is found for her; she therefore ends up making a home of convenience with schoolmate Mai Nguyen, Mai's sullen older brother Quang-ha, and their hard-working mother Pattie in a situation made possible by the school counselor, the inept Dell Duke, who's coerced by Pattie into covering for them with the authorities. What is initially an arrangement of desperation turns into a new life for the Nguyens and for Dell as well as for Willow, but Willow knows that it must all come to an end when her social worker finally manages to find her a foster placement. There are echoes of Horvath's Everything on a Waffle (BCCB 3/01) in this quirky story of life after tragedy, but it's still a deeply original tale; Willow's narration effectively conveys both her outlier tendencies, with her fierce focus on scientific details of botany and her love of the number seven, and the utter, flooding grief she suffers in the wake of her loss. Characterization is sharp yet joyful, with Willow and Mai bonding over not only their racial outsiderhood (Willow is mixed race and Mai Vietnamese) but also their ability to take charge of a situation or an inept adult, while the secondary cast is also afforded nuance and development. Generous-sized print and compact chapters mean the story moves more quickly than its length suggests, and when Willow finally puts down new roots both figuratively and literally (she renovates a garden at their apartment complex), readers will rejoice. DS. 384p. THE BOARD OF TRUSTEES OF THE UNIV. OF ILLINOIS, c2013.
Horn Book | 09/01/2013
Middle School. Twelve-year-old only child Willow Chance is a genius obsessed with plants and medical conditions: "the only reason that I regularly leave the house. . .is to observe sickness in the general population." Nevertheless, her loving adoptive parents send her off to middle school with high hopes. Unrealistically, as it turns out. The one bright spot in her school week is seeing sad-sack counselor Dell Duke, through whom she meets high-schooler Mai Nguyen and her surly brother, Quang-ha. Willow throws herself into the possibility of friendship, teaching herself Vietnamese and feeling euphoric about finally feeling part of a group. When disaster strikes and Willow's parents are killed in an accident, Mai brings Willow home to her mother, Pattie (nee Dung), proprietor of Happy Polish Nails. These disparate characters, plus cabdriver Jairo Hernandez, ultimately connect with one another, forming a new family. What sets this novel apart from the average orphan-finds-a-home book is its lack of sentimentality, its truly multicultural cast (Willow describes herself as a "person of color"; Mai and Quang-ha are of mixed Vietnamese, African American, and Mexican ancestry), and its tone. Willow narrates her own chapters, and her clinical, scientific, pared-down observation of her own grief and healing makes events more poignant, not less. Chapters centering on the other five characters are in the third person but otherwise share Willow's precision and close observation. And if the resolution is a bit too pat and contrived, it's still the ending readers will be hoping for with all their hearts. martha v. parravano. 380pg. THE HORN BOOK, c2013.
School Library Journal | 09/01/2013
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. 384p. SCHOOL LIBRARY JOURNAL, c2013.
Journal Reviews
BookPage | 09/01/2013
Some people have lucky numbers; others have lucky stars. Holly Goldberg Sloan credits her career change, and her subsequent success as an author of children's books, to something a little different: a lucky shrimp. Alas, said shellfish wasn't so felicitous for Sloan's husband. But for her, it touched off a life-changing transition from screenwriter (numerous feature films, including Angels in the Outfield) to author (2011's I'll Be There, and now Counting by 7s). In a phone call from her Santa Monica, California, home, Sloan told BookPage the story of how her first book came to be: "My friend asked us to go on a trip, and didn't give a lot of specifics. It turned out we went to a vegetarian yoga resort, which was totally cool with me, but my husband isn't a vegetarian and doesn't do yoga. The first night, I asked if they had meat or protein of any kind. They were able to get a limited amount of shrimp, so he ordered that." Then, gastrointestinal disaster struck--and between her husband being out of commission for a week and the resort's no-Internet-or-TV policy, Sloan found she had some time to kill. "It was really serendipitous," she says. "If I hadn't gone on a crazy vacation in Mexico, where I was on my own and my husband was in a stone hut, sick . . . I wouldn't have had so much time on my hands, and started writing a book." Fortunately, Sloan's husband was not harmed during the writing of her brilliant second book, Counting by 7s, which draws readers into the singular world of eccentric 12-year-old Willow Chance. Sloan has created a story where the line between youth and adulthood moves back and forth. Willow applies her prodigious intelligence to her hobbies: a thriving and varied backyard garden, and the diagnosis of medical conditions. "I am particularly drawn to skin disorders," Willow explains with a seriousness that is at once amusing and endearing, "which I photograph only if the subject (and one of my parents) isn't looking." She also counts by sevens to establish a soothing sense of order. "It's an escape technique," Willow says. But when her parents, with whom she has a loving relationship, are killed in a car accident, Willow's pain cannot be organized or soothed away. Even worse, the policemen who gave her the terrible news are asking about next of kin--and she has none, save a grandmother with dementia. Then a lie spoken out of compassion--a new friend, Mai, tells the police her family has known Willow's for a long time, and can thus take her in--offers a temporary reprieve. It also segues into a memorable story of kindness among friends and strangers, the dangers and rewards of taking risks, and ultimately an exploration of the meaning of family. Sloan's gift for storytelling is evident: Her characters are sometimes kooky, but not too; trust is earned and happiness tentatively blooms, but not so quickly as to seem unlikely; and Willow's sorrow isn't smoothed over, but rather recognized as an addition to her new, unpredictable existence. If anything might seem improbable to readers, Sloan says, it's probably Willow's preternatural poise and smarts. "I know that some people will read the book and think it's not possible, that Willow seems to have superhuman powers," she says. "But they just haven't been around a kid like that. If you've been around highly gifted kids, some of them do seem to have superpowers, and corresponding confidence. Those kids spend more time with adults . . . but because they're more comfortable with adults, they become outcasts in their own peer group." Sloan says she's "always been interested in those kinds of kids," not least because she was sometimes one of them, which she drew on when creating this story. For example, during one year... Review exceeds allowable length. Linda M. Castellitto. 384pg. BOOKPAGE, c2013.
Horn Book Guide | 05/01/2014
1. After her parents' death, twelve-year-old Willow Chance, a genius obsessed with plants and medical conditions, is taken in by her only friend, high schooler Mai Nguyen, Mai's mother Pattie, and Mai's surly brother, Quang-ha. What sets this novel apart from the average orphan-finds-a-home book is its lack of sentimentality, its truly multicultural cast, and its precise, poignant tone. mvp. 380pg. THE HORN BOOK, c2014.
Kirkus Reviews | 07/15/2013
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). 384pg. KIRKUS MEDIA LLC, c2013.
Publishers Weekly | 07/08/2013
Ages 10-up. 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. Agent: Amy Berkower, Writers House. (Aug.). 384p. PUBLISHERS WEEKLY, c2013.
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