Counting By 7s by Holly Goldberg Sloan

Is it possible that a youngster could lose two sets of parents in the first twelve years of her life? It happened to Willow Chance.

Willow, a dark-skinned 12-year-old middle-schooler with wild curly hair was very young when she was adopted by a sweet couple who had always wanted a child but were never able to have one of their own. Finally, their dreams came true when Willow came into their lives. They could not have been prepared for the child's extreme giftedness. She was indeed a genius. But her mother and father found ways to challenge and stimulate her interests. Willow loved PLANTS, so her parents allowed her to grow a jungle-like garden in their back yard. There, she investigated, studied, experimented, and kept records of all she learned.

Willow became extremely interested in studying human diseases and often watched people for symptoms. She read and kept extensive notes.

With all her intelligence, gifts, and talents, one thing Willow could not do successfully was to make friends. She was socially awkward. Kids considered her an oddball.

Even in her classes, her teachers did not understand her level of genius. After having flown through an achievement test in record time and making a perfect score, the teacher accused her of cheating. Willow was assigned a counselor, Mr. Dell Duke, who coincidentally was the biggest, fumbling, oddball of all. It was in Mr. Duke's counseling classes that Willow met Mai and her angry brother Quang-ha. Determined to make this friendship work, Willow quickly taught herself the Vietnamese language so she could talk with Mai. Shortly thereafter, Mai's family would become crucial to her surviving a coming tragedy.

Willow was suddenly an orphan once again.

Finding herself alone, plunged into a vacuum with nowhere to turn, Willow sank into deep grief and was taken in temporarily by Pattie Nguyen, Mai's and Quang-ha's mother who herself had known tragedy and grief as a young girl in Vietnam. Child Protective Services would soon begin checking living conditions in her temporary placement, and Pattie's garage with sleeping mats would certainly not meet the standards.

What would happen to Willow?
Would she be put into foster care? She knew that few people were interested in adopting a 12-year old girl.
How could a clumsy, ill-prepared counselor help?
What about the taxi driver ... what could he do?
Is it possible that Willow could find hope in a simple acorn?

In Counting by Sevens, Willow experiences death and dying, grief, loss of parents, becoming a foster child, and a recovery that entwines itself around the lives of everyone she touches. It is reminiscent of Winn-Dixie who fills the empty spaces of those around him. In her remarkable journey, the reader, too, will be amazed by the new life that begins in all of the characters. It is an amazing story, beautifully told by a masterful author.

Activities in the 47-page Kids Wings Unit by Suzy Red include:
Pre-Reading Discussion Cards
3-Page Choral Reading Script
Where in the World Does Willow Live? Map Skills
Preparing Your Intellectual Tools, Dialectical Journal
Character Studies,
11 Pages of Chapter Vocabulary Lists and Predict-Read-Confirm Chapter Questions
7 Pages of Multiple Choice and Short-Answer Chapter Questions
3 Pages of Visualizing the Story
Signs of Grief Cards PLUS Stages of Grief Descriptions
Applying Focused Quotations
Writing Prompt: Police Accident Report
Character and Vocabulary Count Crossword Puzzle
Identifying Point of View and Tense in the Story
A Tense Situation
Analogies
Logic Puzzle: Reaching Our Potential
Poetry that Grows Out of Experience: Writing
Research Guides with Big 6 Sequence
Discussion and Writing Prompts
Answer Pages
Plus, a BONUS Interactive Jeopardy-type Game in PowerPoint

This Literature Guide comes in both PowerPoint and PDF formats

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