Today, I’m reviewing Counting by 7’s by Holly Goldberg Sloan. I’ve wanted to read this book for ages, but it wasn’t exactly what I expected. From all the reviews I’ve read for it, and the books it’s been compared to (Mockingbird by Katherine Erskine, Wonder by R. J. Pallacio, Out of my Mind by Sharon M. Draper), I admit that I was a little disappointed with how it turned out, but I could still see myself reading it again.

The main character, Willow, is this adopted, genius, vegetarian-gardener-lover-of-all-things-science twelve-year-old girl. She’s so, so, so intelligent, it’s insane. So she has a hard time expressing emotion or her feelings, and she doesn’t connect to other people very well. (She does, but let’s just say it’s not her strong suit.) At first, I thought Holly Goldberg Sloan would completely flip this stereotype, so that I would be able to understand Willow in a way the minor characters in the book couldn’t. (I still had an advantage on them. I was inside her head!) But I didn’t, not really. I almost didn’t finish this book because at times, Willow made me bored. She’s like a monotonous encyclopedia with legs. Even when she lost her parents (no spoilers, I promise!), she was… surprisingly calm. And it was unnerving to me, even if that’s her personality, or how someone like her would react.

I did really like that I got to read the perspective of the other characters in the book, even some of the adults. I honestly liked them better than Willow. I loved to watch how these characters changed because of Willow, despite the fact that my feelings for Willow didn’t change very much. I was really happy with the ending – but no tears were shed! (Much to my surprise!) 😉 I liked that there was just enough time into the book to get to know Willow’s parents and a love for them before Willow lost them. I was pleasantly surprised at how much I grew to love the people who helped Willow through her grief, even though they themselves didn’t know Willow for very long at all. It was heartwarming and made me really happy to think about people like those, who would help a child like that, no matter what it meant for them.

Counting by 7’s is a powerful story because it did make me think of all the people who would come together for a kid like Willow. From her case worker, to the school counselor, to the Vietnamese nail salon worker who only knew that Willow was a friend of her daughter’s and needed help. I’m actually doing an essay for school on why a character in a book should have helped this stranger in need, and it boils right down to the fact that at some point or another, we’re all going to need help. We all have been in situations where we need a friend to give us a hug, some more than others. And as I was reading this story, no matter how much Willow bothered me at times, I was thinking, “There are people I rather dislike in real life, but I have no idea what their life is like. I don’t know if their parents died, like Willow’s, or if they’re just having a bad day because they got a C on their math test. But if what they need is what I have to give, I should give it, even if it’s as simple as a hug.”

The adorableness of this book was overwhelming! 4 stars. 🙂

I just love cheap books. Especially because if I’ve never heard of them before, and I’m not expecting them to be good or bad, I can still get the book for two or three dollars. But when I saw The Other Half of my Heart, I knew it was going to be good. I also love books with a meaning behind their title, or cover, no matter how obvious it is. Obviously, The Other Half of my Heart is about friendship and family. And when I saw the cover, I knew it was about both… but also that a family doesn’t have to be one skin color.

This book really gave me some perspective in not only the struggle in race, but also the fact that these twins were born from the same mother and father, but one was black and one was white – and they both envy the other. I had seen twins like the main characters in the book, Minni and Keira, before – like Lucy and Maria or Kian and Remee, but I never thought about looking differently from my family, especially when it comes to the color of my skin.

I identify with White, or Caucasian, because that’s my skin tone, my heritage, the color of my family. I think kids from biracial, or “mixed” families have beautiful skin color, and I’m sure they are, and I certainly would be too, proud of their heritage. So it was a really neat perspective to read about two girls from a mixed family, with both White and Black heritage.

But then, even though they had both White and Black heritage, Minni was White and Kiera was Black. They didn’t look alike, they didn’t even look mixed, and people treated them differently. And then their grandmother wanted to enter the girls in a Miss Black Pearl Pageant. And that made Minni wonder if she was truly Black. Is the color of your skin determined by your heritage, or by your skin tone? People who saw Minni and didn’t know her mom and black and her dad was white assumed she was white, because her skin color was white. But Minni identified herself with black people as well, because she came from a partly black family.

This book really made me think of things I’d never really thought of before. I think everyone should read a book like this, because as a Christian, I know that we’re all brothers and sisters in Christ, and race shouldn’t matter, but in this world, to most people, it does, as unfortunate as it may be.

The Other Half of my Heart gets 5 stars!

OHHHH MY GOODNESS. Oh my goodness gracious me, where to begin with this series?! I cannot believe I’ve finished all four books. Two whole years passed as I waited for each book to come out. I read the first book about Abby growing up in the 1930’s in 2013. Then I read the second book, Abby’s daughter, Dana growing up in the 1950’s. And then Dana’s daughter Francie in the 1970’s in the third book. And finally, Francie’s daughter, Georgia, in 2001.

The family tree books follow four generations of girls, and the secrets they keep, and the things that shape who they become. The books reminded me a lot of my own family. Or at least, the stories I’ve heard of my great-grandparents and grandparents and parents. And now me. I LOVED, loved, LOVED the way the series was written.

I got to watch each of the girls grow up, and become moms and wives and grandmas and great-grandmas. I read about their daughters, and the daughters’ perspective, as a little girl. Even when one daughter was angry with her mother, I understood why their mother was the was she was because I knew her past. I knew her stories, her secrets. The things kept hidden from each other and the things that eventually came out.

It was so neat, too, because reading the first book back in 2013, I thought, “Wow, my great-grandmas – my Granny Louise, my Nana, Grandma Nancy, Grandma Billy – they lived through all of this!” and then the second book, my grandparents’ generation. And the third book, my mom and dad’s. And then my generation!

In the fourth and final book (as of right now… years from now, maybe my kids’ generation, perhaps Ann M. Martin will write a fifth book…), Georgia is six years old when the book begins in 2001. (That’s six years older than me, so just a little before my time), and at each chapter, I’d figure out how old I was during that time, and I’d think “Wow! I’m growing up so fast!” My favorite chapter was the second one. September 11th, 2001. That was a big day for me and my family… my birthday!

I HIGHLY, HIGHLY recommend this series. It was AMAZING. Stunning! A jewel of a series if I ever saw one!! It’s the kind of series I’ll pass onto my daughters and granddaughters. The kind of books I hope my kids will read and say “Mom, you really lived without ‘insert whatever crazy new technology we’ll have by then’?” or “You were born on 9/11?” and “Did the President know that would happen?”

Now that I’ve read the last book and everything is pieced together and I know everything, I’ll have to read the series straight through to look for other things I missed the first go-round! These books also make me want to learn more about my own ancestors and family history… I really hope you read these books! I NEED SOMEONE TO GUSH & GAB ABOUT THEM WITH! Have any of you ever read them? 😉

5 stars!

Until Saturday,

P.S. Check out my other book review by Ann M. Martin, A Corner of the Universe, also 5 stars!!

Destiny Rewritten  has been on my TBR since 2013. Seriously. My mom surprised me with it one day last year and it ended up being a DNF – as in, “Did Not Finish.” I finally finished it last week, though, and loved it!

Title: Destiny, Rewritten

Author: Kathryn Fitzmaurice

Genre: Middle Grade Fiction, ages 9-12 (according to Kirkus Reviews)

Length: 335 pages

Publisher: Katherine Tegen Books (February 19th, 2013)

Source: bought!

Blurb: Eleven-year-old Emily Elizabeth Davis has been told for her entire life that her destiny is to become a poet, just like her famous namesake, Emily Dickinson. But Emily doesn’t even really like poetry, and she has a secret career ambition that she suspects her English-professor mother will frown on. Then, just after discovering that it contains an important family secret, she loses the special volume of Emily Dickinson’s poetry that was given to her at birth. As Emily and her friends search for the lost book in used bookstores and thrift shops all across town, Emily’s understanding of destiny begins to unravel and then rewrite itself in a marvelous new way.

Where to begin with this book? Okay, so first thing’s first. The characters. They came a long way. And, by the end of the book, I felt like I had come a long way, too. It was a short read, and yet I felt like the character development was very well written – which is rare for such a short book. I was really surprised by the end of the book how subtly the characters had changed, yet how much they had, indeed, changed, overtime. That’s a fantastic quality in a book, and I loved it!

Another thing that’s really awesome about this MG read – I feel like anyone can relate to the MC, Emily. (Well, I definitely can! Ha… ha…)

She’s grown up expected to be a poet one day, her destiny written in a first edition book of Emily Dickinson poems. The thing is, Emily even doesn’t want to be a poet. She doesn’t even understand poetry – and she definitely isn’t good at writing it. I think many people, of all ages, can understand where eleven-year-old-Emily is coming from. At some point in their lives, a person is going to face not being able to live up to other people’s expectations of themselves – whether you’re 11, or 20, or 30, or 72.

One thing I didn’t like in this book was that sometimes the writing could be very vague… I stumbled over this passage while I was reading it because I didn’t understand who “them” was. Check this out:

“Are you sure?” I said. You won’t get your attendance award this year if you do.” I imagined them ripping it in half and throwing it in the trash as we spoke.

– Chapter Fourteen of Destiny Rewritten, page 96

What do you all think? Is that being too picky of me? It’s up to you, but when I first read that I was slightly confused since there had been no mention of “them,” though it’s understood it’s of teachers or principals since the girl is missing school. 

Now, the ending. It’s the sort you see coming from the very beginning, but you smile and tear up anyway. I was very happy with the way things ended, and even though I knew what was going to happen, in the end, I didn’t mind it so much because, as I said before, the book’s characters changed so much, and went through so much, they deserved a happy ending.

Overall, I really liked this book. There were some flaws, but it was a good book – for a total of three stars. 

What do you think of the book? Am I being too persnickety about that part of the book? Would you like to read it?