Counting by 7s
by Holly Goldberg Sloan
Hi! Have you ever gotten in trouble unfairly? Well, Willow has. Willow is really smart, so some teachers say that she’s cheating on her tests when she makes 100s.
After she made a 100 on every subject on her achievement test, her teachers thought she was cheating, because no one else made a 100 in the entire state. They sent her to counseling with a man named Dell. He wasn’t really qualified for the job; he just needed to make money somehow. (He lied on his resumé and said that he had lots of counseling experience and that’s how he got the job.) However, after a counseling session, Willow came home to find out that her parents were dead. She stayed with her friend from counseling, Mai. Mai lied and said that they were old family friends of Willow’s. When Willow was taken for the paperwork, she felt nauseous and fainted and hit her head – hard! She was taken to the emergency room and had to get nine stitches. After that, she ran away from the officials who were going to take her.
I didn’t like how the teacher thought that Willow was cheating in the book. I’m glad that the author put it in there, but, as a part of the book, I just don’t like the teacher. She had never had a student as smart as Willow, so she just assumed that she was cheating because she was smart. Just think, if she had encouraged Willow to continue, there’s no telling the great things that Willow may have gone on to do. Her family could have even moved to some place with a high level of teaching, and her parents might not have died.
I loved how brave Willow was after they said they were going to move her from Mai’s family. She held her head up high. I can’t imagine how afraid she must have been after her parents died and her teachers didn’t trust her, but, through everything, she faced it with courage.
This book is somewhat like Things You Can’t Say. They both are about how the main character deals with hard loss. You can check out my review of Things You Can’t Say here.
Will Willow be able to find her forever family? Will she be able to be happy again, or will she live the rest of her life sad and miserable? As I always say, read the book to find out!
A few helpful things I like to say about the books I read:
“Run and Get Mom” (how I describe the scariness factor – zero being not scary at all and five being majorly scary): 2
“Yucky-Lovey Stuff” (how I describe the romance factor – zero having no yucky-lovey parts in it and five having major yucky-lovey parts): 3
I give this book 5 wands.
This book was amazing! Willow was so brave through her parents’ death and she makes me want to be brave in ordinary things.
